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MOSCOW - Russia's lower house of parliament
launched debate Wednesday on a law strengthening the constitutional
provision of alternative service with guarantees that would remove
NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia (Reuters) - Alexander Lebed, a tough-talking
general who played a key role in foiling the 1991 coup against
Mikhail Gorbachev and ran for president against Boris Yeltsin
five years later, died Sunday in a helicopter crash.
Lebed's last job was governor of the huge Siberian Krasnoyarsk
region, where the 52-year-old Afghan war veteran had ruffled many
feathers -- prompting suggestions his death might not have been
an accident.
"There was some fog," Alexander Lychkovsky, head of
Lebed's regional security council, said on television. "The
helicopter hit a high-voltage line and crashed."
An Emergencies Ministry officer said there were 19 people on
board. Seven, including Lebed, died while the rest were in hospital
with broken spines, bones and ruptured organs.
The helicopter was carrying Krasnoyarsk administration officials
and local journalists to the inauguration ceremony of a new ski
area in the south of the territory.
Alexei Volin, a government spokesman, told Ekho Moskvy radio
President Vladimir Putin had ordered senior officials to probe
the crash. He said it would be a "painstaking" investigation
but refused to speculate about possible causes.
Earlier, senior parliamentary deputy Alexei Arbatov said he
would not dismiss sabotage as the cause, saying Lebed had made
powerful enemies during his stint as governor of the mineral-rich
area.
Politicians regretted his death, saying that despite the controversy
he usually spurred, it was a big loss for Russia. In a message
of condolences to Lebed's family, Putin called him "a true
Soldier who dedicated his life to serving the Fatherland."
TELEVISED SACKING
A pugnacious paratroop commander with a gravel voice and blunt
style, Lebed shot to prominence in 1991 when his troops helped
Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic that was then part
of the Soviet Union, foil a KGB-backed coup against Kremlin leader
Mikhail Gorbachev.
After the demise of the Soviet Union Lebed, a Cossack from the
southern city of Novocherkassk, grabbed the headlines as he led
Russia's 14th Army in ending a bloody conflict in ex-Soviet Moldova
in summer 1992.
Quitting the armed forces in 1995, he entered parliament and
ran against Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential election, promising
to end corruption in the post-Soviet economy.
He finished third, threw his support behind Yeltsin to defeat
Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov and took on a senior role
in the Kremlin Security Council.
From his new Kremlin position Lebed negotiated a peace deal
with Chechen rebels, which led to Moscow's withdrawal from the
separatist territory. Putin, who sent troops back into Chechnya
in 1999, later called the agreement a betrayal of Russia.
Seeing power slip from ailing Yeltsin's hands, Lebed spurred
a rift with him in 1996. An infuriated, wobbling Yeltsin, who
was about to undergo open heart surgery, went before television
cameras to sign a decree sacking the unruly general.
TERMINAL HIT
Lebed's presidential aspirations took a terminal hit when Yeltsin
successfully recovered from his operation and eventually paved
the way for Putin to take over the Kremlin.
After falling out with Yeltsin, Lebed retreated to regional
politics and in 1998 won the governorship of Krasnoyarsk, a vast
region housing huge nickel and aluminum smelters.
In Krasnoyarsk, Lebed quickly fell foul of business barons who
had backed his campaign. He branded them "mafia" and
called in interior ministry generals to help stamp his authority.
Arbatov said Lebed's passing was likely to upset a shaky regional
political balance which hinged on the charismatic governor's popularity.
"Passions will be boiling and big money will come into
play," Arbatov told Ekho Moskvy radio.
As a politician, Lebed was not afraid to condemn the communist
system whose persecutions sent his father and grandfather to early
graves, or the post-Soviet corruption and drift he saw under Yeltsin.
Cigarette-holder clamped above craggy jaw, he was a hit in a
country ill at ease with the novelty of democracy and yearning
for a strong man with ready answers.
Married with three children, Lebed had a sharp sense of humor
beneath his trademark scowl and, though hardly blessed with classic
good looks, millions of Russian women swooned over his boxer's
nose and rumbling rhetoric. | 