ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MOSCOW
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russia and Belarus agreed Tuesday to form a new union, a move President Boris Yeltsin hopes will appeal to Russian voters nostalgic for the Soviet Union.
The agreement stops short of creating a single state, but it links the two countries' political systems and economies.
Yeltsin, running for re-election in June, is trying to tap a powerful longing among many Russians for the days when their country was strong and dominated smaller nations like Belarus, with which it has historic, ethnic and religious ties.
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus is banking on Russia's help to bail his country out of its economic crisis.
Unlike other former Soviet republics, Belarus has never had a strong nationalist movement. But the new union has given Lukashenko's nationalist opponents new fuel. About 30,000 protesters rallied against the union Tuesday night in the capital Minsk, shouting ``Long Live Belarus,'' until police dispersed them.
Yeltsin and Lukashenko gave each other bear hugs and kisses at the Kremlin signing ceremony, which was broadcast live on television.
``An unfairness that divided our two nations was eliminated,'' Lukashenko said.
Yeltsin said the signing was a ``historic moment,'' and called the treaty a ``document that opens a radically new stage in the history of two sovereign peoples, two sovereign states.''
The union was created two weeks after the Communist-dominated Russian parliament declared the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union illegal and demanded that the union be restored.
The alliance could deflate further efforts by the Communist Party and its front-running presidential candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, to use Soviet restoration as a campaign issue against Yeltsin.
The new Community of Sovereign Republics is to be governed by a council made up of the countries' presidents, prime ministers and parliament leaders, and is eventually to have a common constitution, budget and currency.
The union was blessed by Alexy II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who said ``a short, sad period of separation'' is over.
Many Russians and Belarussians have been angered by difficulties in travel and trade that arose after both countries became independent following the Soviet collapse.
The new union should remove most of those obstacles, but it remained unclear just how closely both nations would now coordinate their political and economic systems.
The two countries agreed to coordinate their foreign policy, stick to common positions on important international issues and work together to protect their borders.
Economic coordination might prove more difficult. The head of Russia's Central Bank, Sergei Dubinin, said there was little chance of a common currency any time soon. He said further talks were needed to work out a common central bank and budget.
Many Belarussians, however, see the agreement as a solution to their economic woes.
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