The State Duma broke new legislative ground Wednesday by overturning a presidential veto and put a motion of confidence in the government on its agenda.


The chamber voted by 313 votes in favor to just six against to override a veto by President Boris Yeltsin on its earlier law on the timing of the 1995 budget.


It was the first time that the warring factions of the Duma have managed to rally together in this way and muster the two thirds majority required to block a presidential veto. The law now requires a similar two-thirds majority vote in the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, in order to go through.


The law keeps the cabinet to a strict timetable for formulating next year's budget and requires the government to present a progress report on the current budget and an account for the 1993 fiscal year before presenting the 1995 budget.


Control of the budget is the Duma's main political weapon and legislators showed they were keen to guard that right Wednesday. They also voted to ask the government to give an account of how it has carried out the 1994 budget and its plans for the 1995 budget in a debate next Wednesday.


Then speaker Ivan Rybkin announced that there will be a confidence debate on the government Friday in an initiative put forward by the Democratic Party of Russia faction.


However, judging by past form, the government is likely to survive the debate. Only two or three militant opposition factions can be counted on to vote for its resignation, while the radical reformers are more likely to abstain. Moreover the president has a constitutional card up his sleeve which allows him override the Duma and, if they renew their request three months later, dissolve it and call new elections.


One of the votes against the government will undoubtedly come from ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who announced Wednesday that his Liberal Democratic Party faction was returning to the chamber only five days after he announced an indefinite boycott of parliament.


"Taking into account the deep crisis in the country and possible changes in the government we are returning to parliament so as not to permit the chance of parliament being hurt," he said.


Zhirinovsky said he had been promised that the governor of Kemerovo region Mikhail Kislyuk, who did not allow his chartered airplane to land on Oct. 2, would be punished.


At the other end of the political spectrum, two veterans of the democratic movement announced the formation of a political party Wednesday to stand in "conditional opposition" to Yeltsin.


Lev Ponomaryov and Galina Starovoitova, whose Democratic Russia movement helped propel Yeltsin to power, said they were hoping for a "second wave" of support for their struggling group.


A statement by the group, which they said was their most critical ever towards the president, said that he had yielded too much to the "extremist forces of counter-reform" and their support for him at the next presidential election was under review.