COMMUNIST PARTY TO PICK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation meets in Moscow today to select its candidate for the presidency. Duma speaker and Communist leader Gennady Seleznev told a press conference February 13 that intense negotiations were under way to try to persuade other left-wing parties and groups to unite behind a single Communist candidate, likely to be lackluster Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Seleznev said talks had been held with numerous political figures to persuade them to abandon plans to run as individual candidates, including Viktor Anpilov, Aman Tuleev, and Pyotr Romanov (all Communists of varying shades); retired Lt. General Aleksandr Lebed, Sergei Baburin, and Nikolai Ryzhkov (from the nationalist camp); and Vasily Starodubtsev (leader of the Agrarian Union and a participant in the failed 1991 coup). In return for joining the Communist campaign, those individuals were offered seats in a "shadow cabinet of popular confidence," Seleznev said. (1)

Kulikov Proposals Generate Controversy.