Yeltsin Asks Parties to Back National Peace Plan

President Boris Yeltsin, declaring the end of political confrontation in Russia, urged the country's political parties Thursday to back his domestic peace initiative.


Yeltsin told a Kremlin gathering of leaders of political and social organizations that a draft of his proposed Memorandum on Civic Accord and Peace would be ready within two weeks


"The time of confrontation has passed," Commonwealth television quoted Yeltsin as telling the meeting. "Russia is on a new path, and we must find a single basis or several common positions to strengthen this constructive process."


"The widest possible circle of representatives of parties and social movements must sign this document," Yeltsin said.


Thursday's meeting was attended by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, deputy parliament speaker Mikhail Mityukov, Nikolai Vitruk, the acting chairman of the Constitutional Court and Patriarch Alexy II.


Also present were representatives of two of the main opposition factions in parliament, Viktor Zorkaltsev of the Communist Party and Alexander Mikhailov of the Agrarian Party, as well as Yegor Gaidar, the leader of the reformist Russia's Choice faction.


His own powers bolstered by a new constitution, Yeltsin is eager to end the political confrontation that characterized 1993 and held up progress on political and economic reforms.


"We all have different views on different events and it is quite natural," Yeltsin said. But he said disagreements should in the future be solved at the negotiating table, not in street battles.


"Together we will preach this line of civic peace and accord, we are all Russians," said the president.


Yeltsin said a working group would be formed to write up the draft document led by Boris Topornin, who heads the Academy of Sciences State and Law institute and is a presidential aide.


The mechanisms envisaged by the document have not been publicized, although Yeltsin has appealed to all parties to contribute to the agreement.


Yeltsin's call for peace apparently does not extend to Alexander Rutskoi, the amnestied former vice president who led last October's parliament uprising.


Nor does it appear to extend to radical groups such as Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party or Viktor Anpilov's hardline Communist Working Russia, neither of which were invited to Thursday's meeting.


It is also unclear what the real effect of the agreement would be in regulating the many policy differences between Yeltsin and the influential hardline opposition wing of parliament.


Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, for example, has made his support for the president contingent on the fulfillment certain demands, such as halting privatization and freezing prices, which are clearly unacceptable to Yeltsin.


Zorkaltsev, the Communist representative at Thursday's meeting, said his party would take part in working out the document, but also questioned its potential usefulness.


"The idea of agreement in society is a good one, but making it work will be hard," Zorkaltsev said. "If it becomes just another empty declaration, society will further lose confidence in the authorities."


The questionable usefulness of the agreement made Gaidar hedge when asked if his Russia's Choice party would back the agreement.


Still, moderate conservatives such as State Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin have hailed Yeltsin's peace memorandum as a start to a much-needed era of cooperation in Russia's upper echelons. "