Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
YELTSIN LOSES COURT RULING
Russian parliament Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov called Tuesday for President Boris Yeltsin's impeachment after the nation's top court ruled that Yeltsin had violated Russia's constitution by claiming "special powers" to rule by decree.Khasbulatov, Yeltsin's chief adversary in a power struggle that has paralyzed the Russian government, said the Congress of People's Deputies, Russia's supreme legislature, should meet in special session and replace Yeltsin with his more conservative vice president, Alexander Rutskoi. Legislators said such a session could take place as early as Friday.
But the smaller working parliament pulled back from immediate confrontation with Yeltsin by postponing until today discussion of the ruling and a decision on whether to convene the Congress. Politicians both for and against Yeltsin said they did not think anti-Yeltsin forces could muster the two-thirds majority needed in Congress to remove him from office.
Yeltsin, who is demanding an April 25 referendum to resolve the political crisis, has said he would ignore an impeachment vote. But the president also seemed to step back slightly when he delayed yet again the publishing of his decree imposing "special rule."
Since he claimed special powers and asked for a referendum, Yeltsin has been opposed by his vice president, the working parliament and the Constitutional Court, while receiving only guarded support from key security ministers.
A key Yeltsin aide, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Fyodorov, urged that a summit between the Russian and U.S. presidents scheduled for April 3-4 be moved from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Moscow as a show of support.
"I would not like the president to leave this country for a long time," Fyodorov said. "It would be better if he stayed here managing the country."
In Washington on Tuesday, President Clinton strongly reaffirmed his support for Yeltsin while hedging on what U.S. policy would be if Yeltsin were impeached.
Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said there were no plans to change the site of the summit.
Fyodorov, the government's economic chief, also demanded that Yeltsin take control of the Central Bank away from parliament and fire bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko, who Fyodorov said was sabotaging reforms by allowing runaway inflation.
According to Russia's constitution, the Congress of People's Deputies can consider impeachment once the Constitutional Court has ruled that a president has violated the constitution.
The court, after meeting through the night, came to such a conclusion at 7 a.m. Tuesday, by a vote of 9-3, although the judges had not yet seen Yeltsin's decrees.
The court ruled that he was violating several constitutional provisions on the balance of powers by proposing to hold a referendum without parliament's approval.
Yeltsin asked the nation to vote on three questions: confidence in his rule, approval of a new constitution and approval of new voting that would lead to parliamentary elections.
The Yeltsin administration questioned the legitimacy of the court ruling, saying Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin had revealed his bias by joining legislative opponents to condemn Yeltsin's statement just hours after it was aired. Mikhail Fedotov, minister of information, said the court "went far beyond the limits" of the law in its ruling.