Russia Pays Part of Debt to Hungary With MIGs : Military: Budapest is getting 28 of the supersonic jets--26 more than the number of pilots to fly them. The deal has ruffled nearby nations.

In partial settlement of its Communist-era trade debt to Hungary, Russia has deeded over 28 state-of-the-art MIG-29 fighter jets--26 more than the number of Hungarian pilots who know how to fly them.

Even after the Russians train their erstwhile allies to use the high-tech trade goods, the planes are unlikely to get much exercise at top speed. Hungary’s small territory can be overflown by the supersonic jets in minutes, posing the risk of provocative intrusions into bordering airspace.

The acquisition, which has ruffled some neighboring countries, reflects the insecurity felt by Hungarians who find themselves poorly defended and surrounded by post-Cold War turmoil.

Serbs, Croats and Muslim Slavs are at war in the wreckage of the former Yugoslav federation to the south, and Budapest’s relations with Romania and Slovakia are strained by persistent disputes over the treatment of Hungarian minorities in those countries. There is also concern here over the potential for conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which also sits on Hungary’s volatile border.

“This whole region of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union is a powder keg,” said Lt. Col. Lajos Erdelyi, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, explaining the government decision to acquire the new MIGs. “We don’t feel Hungary is threatened by any one nation. It’s just in a bad neighborhood.”

Since the fall of hard-line communism four years ago, Hungary and other countries in Eastern Europe have lost the military protection they were accorded under the now-defunct Warsaw Pact alliance; they have yet to gain any compensating security assurances from the West.

Hungary has been leading the regional drive for expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include developing democracies caught in a security void. But Budapest officials concede NATO membership is probably years away, while the hazards of the region are immediate.

The delivery of Hungary’s first MIG-29s has taken place amid debate over how swiftly the former Communist satellites should be accorded security assurances by the newly friendly West. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told Hungarian officials during his October visit that “partnership” is on the agenda but that security guarantees would come only later.

A senior official of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe defended the view that extending NATO security to countries like Hungary should be a phased-in process that takes Moscow’s position into consideration. Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin warned prior to Christopher’s visit that he opposed any NATO defense compacts with Eastern Europe.

“These countries suffer a misfortune of geography,” the CSCE official said. “It cannot be ignored that their inclusion in NATO would stir unpleasant reaction in Moscow.”

With neither the Red Army nor NATO to count on, Hungary has sought to upgrade its forces within the limits of its strained budget for what looks to be a long wait for inclusion in the Western alliance. “I want to dispel the notion that Hungary is rearming,” Defense Minister Lajos Fur said when the first eight MIG-29s arrived in mid-October, insisting the planes were acquired entirely for defense purposes. The rest of the planes are expected to arrive at their new base in Kecskemet within weeks.

Even with the 28 Russian-built jets, Fur insisted, Hungary’s otherwise aging air force remains well under the 180-plane ceiling established by the European treaty on conventional arms.

But the debt-for-defenses deal appears to have added to the regional tensions that prompted Hungary to take the jets valued at $800 million as payment toward $2 billion owed by the former Soviet Union.

Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar in late October accused Hungary of pushing the region into a new arms race, despite Slovakia having recently accepted 10 of the jets in similar trade compensation from Moscow.

Hungarian leaders sought to blunt Meciar’s criticism with assurances that the planes were acquired because of a regionwide security vacuum, not in response or challenge to any particular country. But the acrimonious exchange between those two neighbors, as well as the rump Yugoslavia’s accusations of aggressiveness on the part of Budapest, has highlighted the regional insecurity that is likely to grow as long as the poorly defended Eastern European states get a cold shoulder from NATO.

Williams, The Times’ Vienna Bureau chief, recently was on assignment in Budapest.