Russia miners pile on pressure, block railway
10:12 a.m. Jul 05, 1998 Eastern
By Philippa Fletcher
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian coalminers kept up pressure on the embattled
government Sunday by blocking the key Trans-Siberian railway for a third
day in protest at their region's economic decay.
In the Far East, strikes by electricity workers over wage delays brought
long power cuts to the port of Vladivostok at the weekend which
officials said could affect hospitals and military installations if big
debts to the energy company are not paid.
President Boris Yeltsin, who spent most of last week in a residence
outside Moscow, was due to discuss moves to tackle the debt crisis,
including a controversial crackdown on tax dodgers, with Prime Minister
Sergei Kiriyenko in the Kremlin Monday.
Yeltsin, 67, was reported to be planning a holiday mid-month, but only
if the opposition-dominated parliament made satisfactory progress on
approving government proposals to shore up state finances and protect
the battered ruble currency.
Yeltsin has issued a veiled threat to dissolve parliament if it does not
hurry up and pass the laws, which the government hopes will fill a big
budget gap and help it to win a $10-15 billion emergency loan from the
International Monetary Fund.
Deputies have approved some of them but said others may be delayed by
their two-month summer break starting mid-July.
They have been distracted by two other unexpected developments -- a
threat by the government to freeze the assets of gas monopoly Gazprom
unless it pays its taxes and the murder of leading opposition
parliamentarian General Lev Rokhlin.
The opposition has criticized the pressure on Gazprom, fearing the giant
company will cut off some of its cash-strapped customers, including
industry, and the state sector.
It has also seized on Rokhlin's murder, alleging a political plot,
although police say his wife confessed to killing the general -- a
fierce opponent of the government's planned military reforms -- when his
body was found Friday morning.
In a sign of the sensitivity of the allegations, the Kremlin has ordered
a full and open inquiry.
The threat to confiscate Gazprom's assets, delayed Friday until August 1
after the powerful company agreed to pay up, is part of efforts by the
two-month-old cabinet to overcome the effects of a drop in world oil
prices, low tax collection and general unease about emerging economies
among foreign investors.
The industrial unrest threatens to add to its woes.
''We are only letting passenger trains go,'' said a spokesman for the
protesting miners in the Siberian town of Anzhero-Sudzhensk, where other
workers are also demonstrating against the threatened closure of their
indebted enterprises.
A senior controller of the railway ministry told Russian Television 18
freight trains had been held up, including 41 wagons filled with
perishable goods.
Government officials flew to Anzhero-Sudzhensk over the weekend to try
to stop the railway blockade spreading. They say a similar two-week
action in May on three lines cost millions of dollars.
Interfax news agency said Yeltsin, reported by his spokesman to have
been put in a bad mood by the economic crisis, would travel to a
lakeside residence near Petrozavodsk, the regional capital of Karelia in
Russia's northwest, on July 14 or 15.
Yeltsin spent his holiday in Karelia last summer, going fishing and
playing tennis for the first time since a heart operation in November
1996. He also worked and met officials and Interfax said this year would
be the same.
A Kremlin spokesman said he had no official information on the
president's holiday plans but confirmed he would go to the Kremlin
Monday.
Russian news agencies said Yeltsin would meet Kiriyenko and Kazakh
President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who agreed to fly to Moscow to sign a
deal dividing up the resource-rich Caspian Sea after Yeltsin canceled a
planned visit to Kazakhstan last week to deal with the economic problems
at home. |
