Confident Yeltsin offers his hand to Communists: Change in government policy 'out of the question'

A YEAR to the day after tanks blasted recalcitrant and heavily armed foes from Moscow's White House, President Boris Yeltsin yesterday declared Russia back as a world power, offering a place in government to Communist rivals but vowing no retreat from the reforms they denounce as ruinous.

Looking confident and reasonably fit at a news conference in the Kremlin, Mr Yeltsin said: 'The main thing is that a second October revolution did not occur . . . There is a completely different attitude to Russia from a year ago. Any change in policy is out of the question.' He also spoke against any postponement of the next presidential election, due in 1996.

With opinion sharply divided over what are now referred to as the 'October events', the Kremlin handed out copies of its version of how 147 people came to die: a 650- page book of documents and sympathetic commentary, Moscow, Autumn-93: Chronicle Confrontation.

'We are building a new Russia without evil, blood and deception,' the 63-year-old president said, 'and we rembember those who died, regardless of whether they were defending democracy or were on the side of those pushing Russia towards civil war.'

The occasion was carefully stage-managed, however, to smother all questions about why, on his way home from Washington last week, Mr Yeltsin failed to emerge from his plane to meet the Irish Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds.

Mr Yeltsin promised to stick with the Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and other 'key figures in the government'.

An issue that is thought to divide the Kremlin inner circle is the possiblity of including Communists and other opposition figures in the cabinet. Mr Yeltsin seems to have sided with those seeking a broad consensus, even if this means diluting further the already limited influence of the so- called democratic camp.

'Renewal is something quite natural for a living thing,' Mr Yeltsin said. 'The government is a living thing and changing one or two ministers is quite possible. There is no sin in an opposition member joining the government. It would contribute to stability.'

Excluded from the invitation, though, is Mr Yeltsin's own former runing mate and vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, who led resistance from the White House last year along with the then chairman of parliament, Ruslan Khasbulatov. He mocked Mr Rutskoi's chances of ever coming to power, rating his popularity at around two or three per cent.

'Our biggest gain is that we have achieved a political and economic consensus.'

(Photograph omitted)