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Politics : Clinton -- doomed & wagging, Japan collapses, Y2K bug, etc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (197)	9/10/1998 3:03:00 PM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

New York Times - 09/10/98 By MICHAEL R. GORDON MOSCOW -- As Russian President Boris Yeltsin pondered for a second day over who would be his next prime minister, the Communists threatened Wednesday to pursue impeachment proceedings if he renominates Viktor Chernomyrdin. The warning was a pressure tactic to induce Yeltsin to abandon Chernomyrdin. In the byzantine world of Russian politics, it was also a defensive maneuver to block him from dissolving the parliament. "If Yeltsin comes up with Chernomyrdin for the third time, the Duma will raise the issue of impeachment," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told reporters, referring to the lower house of parliament. Yeltsin huddled with Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov, who has been touted for prime minister by the liberal and Communist opposition, as speculation swirled that he might shuffle the deck yet again and pick a new candidate. As the president remained closeted in his Gorky-9 residence outside of Moscow, Russia's economy continued its downward spiral. The Kremlin on Wednesday lifted tariffs on medicines, a belated effort to cope with shortages of drugs in pharmacies and hospitals. But the scarcity of goods -- and old-fashioned profiteering -- has continued to drive prices skyward. The State Statistics Committee reported Wednesday night that prices rose by 36 percent during the first week of September. The only apparent piece of good news was that the ruble rose somewhat in value. Even that was deceptive. The change, economists said, was largely the result of buying by banks and other customers who need rubles to pay their debts. It was not a vote of confidence in the economy. The chaos in the marketplace was grist for the Communists, who have cast themselves as the champion of Russia's downtrodden and dispossessed. With Yeltsin at Gorky-9, the Communists took center stage Wednesday. Declaring their willingness to form a government of national unity, they issued a platform echoing Soviet themes. The Communists promised cheap credits to ailing factories and tariffs to protect Russian enterprises from foreign competition. Major industries would be renationalized. Salaries would be paid and savings protected. There would be a crackdown on financial speculation. Some of Russia's most ardent market reformers conceded that the left might succeed -- at least temporarily -- in securing a place for themselves in the Kremlin. "In the present situation, of course, I cannot rule out the coming to power of a government with the participation of Communists or a government controlled by the Communists," said Yegor Gaidar, the free market reformer and former prime minister. "I do not have any faith in a lasting Communist comeback." The escalating crisis has led to a bitter round of finger-pointing. Anatoly Chubais, the former Kremlin aide who led the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, insisted that the government had made every effort to stave off the devaluation of the ruble and satisfy the West. But he told the newspaper Kommersant that Yeltsin had acted correctly by denying to the very end that the devaluation of the ruble was under consideration, saying that anything less would heighten the panic. "So now the international financial institutions understand, despite the fact that we conned them for $20 billion, that we had no other way," he said ruefully. The main focus, however, was on the wrangling over the prime minister post. Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's pugnacious mayor, who met with Chernomyrdin on Wednesday, said he believed Yeltsin would renominate Chernomyrdin for a third and decisive time. Nobody could be sure, however, just what Yeltsin would do. Alexander Lebed, a Siberian governor and former general, predicted that Yeltsin would yield to the demands of the Communist opposition and nominate Primakov or Yuri Maslyukov, a Communist deputy and former Soviet economic planner who served briefly in the Yeltsin government before resigning. The Communist-led parliament has often engaged in loose talk about impeachment. The impeachment procedures, however, have taken on a new urgency. The parliament has twice rejected Chernomyrdin. Under Russia's constitution, a third rejection would force the dissolution of the body and new parliamentary elections -- unless the Communists come up with their own legislative tactic to block it. That is why they are threatening to vote impeachment before Chernomyrdin's nomination is taken up again. A vote to impeach would preclude the president from dissolving the parliament for several months, according to the constitution. To pursue impeachment, the Communists need the support of 300 of the 450 votes in the lower-house of parliament, a margin that Zyuganov insisted was attainable. It is much harder to actually remove the president. Any decision to oust Yeltsin by the lower house of parliament would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the upper house of parliament, which has been more supportive of the Kremlin, and by the courts. The likely result would be a constitutional crisis. The Communists would insist that the issue was impeachment. Yeltsin could insist on his own reading of the constitution and press for the disbanding of the parliament. He could even ask the legislature's upper house to declare a state of emergency. The Communists are not the only ones working on impeachment. The deputy chairman of the parliament's impeachment commission is Yelena Mizulina, a member of the liberal Yabloko party, which is headed by Grigory Yavlinsky, who is a fierce critic of Yeltsin. She said in an interview that the commission is planning to complete the articles of impeachment this week so that that the parliament can vote on them as early as Monday. The main charges will center on Yeltsin's role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his decision to shell the parliament building in October 1993 and the war in Chechnya. The talk of impeachment was not the only step the Parliament took to protect itself -- and its perquisites -- Wednesday. Deputies also voted to pay themselves wages through the end of the year even if the parliament is disbanded. Some leading officials said none of the maneuvering would stop Yeltsin. Asked who Yeltsin would nominate, Luzhkov said: "You need to know Boris Yeltsin. I think Chernomyrdin."

To: SOROS who wrote (197)	9/10/1998 3:10:00 PM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

USA Today - 09/10/98 WASHINGTON - Thrust into the first presidential impeachment case since Watergate, the House is moving rapidly to release some of the ''substantial and credible'' information gathered by prosecutors against President Clinton. Republican and Democratic leaders pledged Thursday to be fair and nonpartisan in reviewing the 36 boxes of impeachment material delivered to Congress by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who refused to give it to the White House first. Sources familiar with the report said it lays out evidence of alleged obstruction of justice, perjury and abuse of power by Clinton in his effort to conceal his affair with Monica Lewinsky - in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against the president and the subsequent criminal investigation. The sources, who spoke only if not identified, were not more specific. Lawmakers Thursday were working out arrangements to make at least 445 pages of the report public Friday. The information would be posted on the Internet. ''The president and his attorneys ought to be able to have a rebuttal so we can see it in a balanced way,'' said House Minority Whip David Bonior, D-Mich., speaking on NBC's Today show. House Deputy Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called again Thursday for Clinton's resignation, saying he wasn't moved by the president's fresh apologies. DeLay said Clinton should have an opportunity to tell his side, but he did not suggest that the president was entitled to see Starr's report before its release. ''We have to look at the report, see what Ken Starr has,'' DeLay said on NBC. ''We have to make sure that what he has said is the truth and backed up.'' After the surprise delivery to Congress, Clinton's personal attorney, David Kendall, immediately insisted, ''There is no basis for impeachment.'' But Starr spokesman Charles Bakaly told reporters the independent counsel had turned over ''substantial and credible information that may constitute grounds for impeachment of the president of the United States.'' When the Starr material arrived at the Capitol, Clinton was in Florida for two fund-raisers, assuring supporters that he is contrite and willing to do what it takes to weather the controversy. Now facing the gravest challenge in a career of political crises, Clinton planned to meet Thursday with Senate Democrats and his Cabinet. On Capitol Hill, after a dizzying series of meetings among House members, much remained unsettled on how lawmakers would proceed. Republicans balked at Democratic requests the White House be given a day or two to review the report. Discussions also were under way on whether to quickly make public some 2,500 pages of backup material Starr gathered in his grand jury inquiry, said Rep. Gerald B. Solomon, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Rules Committee. But Starr cautioned in a letter to House leaders: ''Many of the supporting materials contain information of a personal nature that I respectfully urge the House to treat as confidential.'' Other unresolved matters include how much authority the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., should be allowed to wield without Democratic consent, and a timetable for determining whether Starr's report warrants a full-scale impeachment inquiry by the House. The 445 pages include a 25-page introduction, a 280-page narrative and 140 pages detailing grounds for possible impeachment, Solomon said. Solomon told reporters he recommended to colleagues that a Judiciary Committee review of the material be completed this year, possibly before the November election. If need be, the House could recess when legislative business is completed for the year and return to vote on conducting a full impeachment inquiry next year, he said. However, the new House seated in January would have to reconfirm any decision to move ahead. Only one president - Andrew Johnson in 1868 - has been impeached by the House, and he was acquitted by a single vote in a trial in the Senate. In 1974, Richard Nixon stood on the brink of impeachment over the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate, but he resigned before any votes were taken by the full House. In a speech in the Senate Wednesday, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., accused Clinton of handling the current scandal as ineptly as Nixon did his. ''We seem to be living history over again,'' said Byrd, who long served as his party's leader in the Senate. ''Time seems to be turning backward in its flight. And many of the mistakes that President Nixon made are being made all over again.'' Starr's grand jury has questioned numerous witnesses since January, when a former colleague of Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, precipitated Starr's inquiry by providing prosecutors with taped conversations in which the former White House intern alleged an 18-month affair with the president. On Jan. 21, Clinton publicly denied having sex with Lewinsky or telling anyone to lie. In the intervening months, the White House battled Starr's office over his right to question Secret Service agents and White House lawyers. Clinton confidants such as Vernon Jordan and Oval Office secretary Betty Currie were questioned as Starr looked into whether Clinton tried to buy Lewinsky's silence with job offers and gifts. Clinton made a speech to the nation on Aug. 17 about Lewinsky in which he described his relationship with her as wrong and ''inappropriate.'' With the fate of his presidency at stake, Clinton appealed to Democrats on Wednesday and promised to set the Lewinsky matter right before the elections. ''I ask you for your understanding, for your forgiveness,'' he said in Orlando, Fla. ''I'm determined to redeem the trust of all the American people.''