Russian President Boris Yeltsin accused NATO of planning to "take the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and stuff them with nuclear arms" in a Kremlin interview with French television. Describing this policy as "madness," Yeltsin said Russia would "do everything" to prevent NATO nuclear weapons from being deployed near Russia's borders. In Brussels, a NATO spokesman denied the alliance would deploy nuclear weapons in any new Eastern European member states, but both Poland and the Czech Republic have announced that they would permit such weapons if they were accepted into NATO.