The Yabloko and the SPS factions of the State Duma decided not to support the proposal to legally approve the music by Alexandrov as the new Anthem for Russia. This decision was taken by the Co-ordination Council of the two factions.

Deputy Heads of the SPS and the Yabloko factions Viktor Pokhmelkin and Sergei Ivanenko will express their position on this issue at a press conference to be held in the State Duma at 12.00 p.m.

See also:

Yabloko proposes the march “Farewell of a Slavic woman” as a new anthem of Russia

The Yabloko faction has developed and plans to submit on November 22, 2000 to the Government of Russia four ways out of the energy crisis in Maritime Territory, announced deputy of the State Duma, Secretary on Ideology of the Yabloko Association, Sergei Mitrokhin.

He is one of the four deputies responsible for the proposal “On the state of emergency with heat and electricity supplies to cities and towns of Maritime Territory and other regions of the Russian Federation” to be considered by the State Duma on November 22. The Duma invited Chairman of the RF Government Mikhail Kasyanov, Chairman of the Board of RAO “The Single Energy System of Russia” Anatoli Chubais and Governor of Maritime Territory Yugeni Nazdratenko to make reports on this issue.

The Yabloko faction proposes that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, issue a Decree on the formation of Governmental Commission on the situation in Maritime Territory. The Commission should include the plenipotentiary

representative of the President in the Far East Federal District, a representative of the administration of Maritime Territory, as well as representatives of the Control Department of the Administration of the President, Control and Audit Department of the Finance Ministry and the federal treasury.

Yabloko proposes that the RF government consider the following solutions to the energy crisis in Maritime Territory:

• Variant 1. Grant treasury a short-term loan to the administration of the Territory under the control of the federal, provided that the money is offset against concluded treaties for the delivery of fuel and energy resources and ensure allocation of these funds directly to fuel suppliers, thereby bypassing the accounts of the administration of the Territory.
• Variant 2. Grant the guarantees of the RF government on the attraction of short-term loans from commercial banks that will be allotted to the purchase of fuel for Maritime Territory with an automatic repayment of these loans from the transfers envisaged for Maritime Territory in the federal budget for 2001.
• Variant 3. The Finance Ministry should resolve, together with the Defence Ministry, the issue of granting the administration of the Territory a necessary volume of fuel as a commodity credit under the guarantees of the Finance Ministry and return of the corresponding means from transfers envisaged for Maritime Territory in the federal budget for 2001.
• Variant 4. The funds for the purchase of fuel should immediately be allotted from the reserve funds of the government and the President of the RF, or for this goal the reserve fuel funds of the Defence Ministry and the Ministry of Extraordinary Situations should be used.

“The situation in Maritime Territory is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. Virtually all the main systems of life provision of the Territory are in a critical condition,” added Mitrokhin.

“The situation recurred every year, but has deteriorated each year,” noted Mitrokhin. “Today it is already obvious that these developments were engendered by the economic failings of the administration of the Territory. The fuel, energy and budget crisis, as well as the general crisis in housing and communal services in Maritime Territory is primarily attributable to a crisis of management.”

“However, the responsibility lies not only with the regional, but also with the federal authorities which have failed so far to propose any solutions ,” added Mitrokhin. “The President and the government should adopt extraordinary measures before information on the first victims of the energy crisis appear,” he noted.

“Today in Russia, under the cover of theoretical discussions about army reforms, which do not reveal anything to anyone, virtually two military doctrines exist, and correspondingly two competing programmes for the purchase of weapons, military equipment, research and pilot projects, and two reform programmes in the armed forces. This is an absolutely abnormal situation,” said Alexei Arbatov, Deputy Head of the Defence Committee for the State Duma, deputy of the Yabloko faction, in an interview with journalists on November 21.

According to Arbatov, the lack of clarity and firm positions in the leadership of the armed forces affects everything, even the work of the Duma Commission responsible for work over secret items of the military budget for 2001. Arbatov also noted that members of the commission were confronted with the reluctance of the Ministry of Defence to clearly formulate how it was going to use “the huge additional funds detected by the State Duma”. According to Arbatov, this amounts to “12.6 bln roubles at once and may be another 6.8 bln roubles, and then an additional 5 bln roubles.”

Arbatov believes that the reluctance of the Ministry of Defence to take a decision here may be attributed to the fact “that it is paralised”.

Arbatov also commented on the meeting of the President of the RF Vladimir Putin with the leadership of the armed forces on November 20. Arbatov noted that he was not present at the meeting, but as far as he could judge from reports in the mass media, “the President did not present any large-scale initiative involving a serious conceptual position on the issue which has virtually caused a split in the Ministry of Defence”.

Speaking about the part of the President’s speech devoted to a mechanism of compensation in the event of the proposed abolition of privileges for the military, including the right to free transport, Arbatov stressed that this is “the correct vision of the problem”. He thinks that the practice where “first, people are deprived of privileges and only then do the authorities begin thinking about compensatory mechanisms” is vicious.

Such practices, stressed Arbatov, should be eradicated, “even under the threat of dismissal of the government and higher officials.”

Speaking about other issues in the meeting between the President and the

military leadership, Arbatov drew the attention of the journalists to the fact that “the Minister of Defence and the head of the General Headquarters sat far apart from each other and did not even look at one another". According to Arbatov, this is an “abnormal situation”, as one should not forget that the Head of the General headquarters is subordinate to the Minister of Defence and “should behave accordingly.”

“If he does not behave as a subordinate and challenges the Minister of Defence, he is violating the basic principle of the army – single leadership. The President should either conduct a large-scale investigation with the whole of the upper echelons of the military leadership, or dismiss the military head challenging the basic principle of military organisation,” added Arbatov.

Based on Interfax reports.

See also:

Yabloko: the Defence Ministry is failing to take any definite steps to overcome the crisis in the armed forces