
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990                   TAG: 9006220143
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Short

GORBACHEV ACCUSES CRITICS OF SLANDER

President Mikhail Gorbachev accused his hard-line critics of slander Thursday and faced the prospect that one of them would be elected head of the Russian republic's Communist Party.

Gorbachev was put on the defensive for a third day when a Leningrad economist claimed he did not obtain party approval to switch the Soviet Union to a market economy.

"To consider that this idea and program dropped from the sky, or that somebody is undertaking an overnight coup to change our course, that is slander," Gorbachev told the Congress of Russian Communists.

Numerous conservatives at the meeting have indicated they will try to replace Gorbachev as party leader at a national party congress starting July 2.

- Associated Press

by CNB