Economy Gives Yeltsin Plenty to Talk About

President Boris Yeltsin is due to deliver a state-of-the-nation speech to parliament Tuesday, kicking off a potentially important week in politics for both Moscow and the Commonwealth of Independent States.


Yeltsin's harshest critics in parliament two weeks ago marked his speech as a watershed, until which they would hold off on any maneuvers to dislodge the government headed by acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar.


Gaidar himself is scheduled to speak directly after Yeltsin, delivering a report on how to further economic reforms.


No serious collision between the government and its critics in the legislature is likely, however, until the Congress of People's Deputies, the full parliament, is convened in the winter. The 1, 042 member Congress, unlike the working parliament, has the power to dismiss Gaidar's cabinet.


Yeltsin's speech is likely to tackle the disastrous state of Russia's economy, part of which is due to the atomization of the former Soviet republics. On Friday he will meet other heads of state of the CIS in an attempt to redress that.


Meeting in Moscow on Monday, the CIS Foreign Ministers set a 20-point agenda for Friday's summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kirgyzstan. The heads of government will meet simultaneously to discuss a slightly broader program.


The impact of CIS summits has proved impossible to predict in the past, but after Monday's meeting the Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said he believed that Bishkek would mark a turning point for the shaky alliance of 11 former Soviet republics.


First on the agenda, according to Interfax, is to consider a draft charter for the CIS, which if eventually adopted, should give some stability to what is a highly fluid structure.


The heads of state will also discuss the small wars which are raging in a number of republics. At the request of Tajikistan's foreign minister, the recent fighting there will get special attention.


The summit may prove to be Nursultan Nazarbayev's show, however.


The president of Kazakhstan months ago floated a five-point plan to cement the union between CIS states, and the key economic provisions of his plan will be on the agenda at Bishkek.


Nazarbayev's plan would set up a two-tier system for the CIS, with those countries choosing to stay in the ruble zone on the upper tier and the rest on the lower.


Ruble-zone states would form an economic council at which they would coordinate economic policies.


Rubles now flood across the borders, causing inflationary pressures, especially whenever one of the former republics issues its own currency or quasi currency, such as Ukraine's coupons.


Belarus for that reason on Monday withdrew the ruble from circulation in areas bordering Lithuania and Ukraine, both of which have quasi currencies.


Other republics also suffer because only Russia has the power to print money, meaning that republics such as Kazakhstan must accept a monetary policy in which they have no say.


The Ukraine and Moldova have already said they intend to leave the ruble zone and set up their own currencies. Both are unlikely to look on the Nazarbayev plan kindly.


A number of security matters will be also considered, including cooperation in securing CIS borders, establishing a common defense policy and splitting the Black Sea fleet into separate Ukrainian and Russian navies.