Yeltsin's dash home 'saves' reformers

Back in Moscow after a truncated trip to China, President Boris Yeltsin yesterday fought to shore up his authority and block attempts to expel reformists from the cabinet, amid warnings of a hardline resurgence.

An immediate crisis over ministerial appointments by Russia's new Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was said to have been resolved, but a fierce struggle over Russia's future direction seems far from over.

'As far as the make-up of the cabinet is concerned the basic current team will be preserved,' said the presidential spokesman Vychaslav Kostikov, after talks yesterday between Mr Chernomyrdin and President Yeltsin. He said Mr Chernomyrdin, 54, a former energy industry bureaucrat, had pledged to continue economic reform and retain ministers inherited from his predecessor, the 36-year-old free-market economist Yegor Gaidar.

There was no immediate comment from Mr Chernomyrdin, whose only important decision so far has been to increase credits for Russia's energy industry, his own political base.

President Yeltsin rushed home from Peking on Saturday saying that conservatives, emboldened by the fall of Mr Gaidar last Monday, were trying to gut the government of all reformist influence: 'So the master must return to restore order.'

Why he felt such a dramatic gesture necessary remains a mystery - especially as Mr Chernomyrdin was in Kazakhstan, and has repeatedly encouraged Mr Gaidar's reformist team to stay on. But it highlights how volatile Russian politics have become since conservatives in the Congress of People's Deputies forced Mr Gaidar out. The Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, one of the ministers most vulnerable to conservative attack, yesterday expressed fears that foreign, as well as economic, policy was under threat. 'There is real danger in foreign policy of a return to the siege fortress mentality,' he told a congress of the pro-reform Democratic Russia movement in Moscow. One of the biggest dangers, he said, was conservative demands that Moscow support Serbia.

President Yeltsin, however, tried yesterday to assure the West that foreign policy would remain unchanged, telephoning George Bush to discuss a possible summit meeting to sign nuclear disarmament accord known as Start-2. Like his old rival, Mikhail Gorbachev, he has come to relish foreign policy as a break from infighting at home.

How successful Mr Yeltsin has been in preserving the thrust of economic reform will be known by tomorrow, the deadline set for Mr Chernomyrdin to announce his new cabinet. Yesterday's reported agreement suggests that none of the central figures brought in by Mr Gaidar will go.

Mr Chernomyrdin describes himself as a reformer, but insists that the government must do all it can to boost industrial production, which has fallen by 23 per cent since the beginning of the year. But any sharp increase in support to faltering state firms could push Russia into hyperinflation.

However, Mr Mr Yeltsin seems less worried by Mr Chernomyrdin than by the leaders of the conservative Civic Union, such as Arkady Volsky, and other figures who forced Mr Gaidar from office. Mr Volsky was quoted by Izvestia as calling for a thorough shake-up of the cabinet, to include Civic Union members. He later denied the comments.