CENTRISTS FAIL TO STRIKE DEAL.

At an April 4 press conference in Moscow, one of the leaders of the fledgling electoral alliance "Third Force," Oleg Rumyantsev, acknowledged that it had failed to agree on a single presidential candidate. (NTV, April 4) His statement ended speculation about a joint campaign by Aleksandr Lebed, Grigory Yavlinsky, and Svyatoslav Fedorov. Commentators had predicted such an outcome, but Lebed and Yavlinsky are said to have fallen out definitively over how Yeltsin’s Chechen peace plan should be judged. In the past week, both Yavlinsky and Lebed have appeared be moving away from the center. Yavlinsky has attracted the support of such uncompromising democrats as Sergei Kovalev and Yelena Bonner, while Lebed, addressing a congress of the Democratic Party of Russia, seemed to suggest that Russia might not yet be ready for democratic elections.

Yeltsin and Zyuganov Reveal Their Secret Weapons.