Letter: Perceptions of Boris Yeltsin

Sir: Lord Kennet's political and personal assessment of Boris Yeltsin, based on the BBC Monitoring Services' daily Summary of World Broadcasts, is most welcome (Letters, 30 March).

For example, how many Yeltsin supporters in the West have been aware that, contrary to so many statements, the Russian parliament is not 'an assembly of 'hardliner' Communists' but was elected under Mr Gorbachev?

When it comes to foreign affairs, it seems that American and British politicians are often ill-informed and naive. Anyone who comes into prominence in a national upheaval only has to voice loud belief in free markets to gain their support, just as an 'anti-Communist' stand used to be the laissez-passer for emergent dictators to gain American and British aid, particularly in Latin America.

If these BBC Monitoring Services' reports were published in the national press it would be easier to form one's own views amid the confusion of current world events.

Yours faithfully,

JAMES MacGIBBON

Manningtree,

Essex

30 March