MOSCOW BACKS DOWN IN CONFRONTATION WITH TATARSTAN.

The Russian government has backed down from its threat to start bankruptcy proceedings against the KamAZ truck plant for alleged non-payment of federal taxes. The government of the Republic of Tatarstan, where KamAZ is based, had responded furiously to the Kremlin’s threat, describing it as senseless, destructive, and contradictory to the power-sharing treaty signed by the republic and the federal center in 1994. Tatarstan’s president, Mintimer Shaimiev, traveled to Moscow for talks with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin on the issue. After that meeting, Shaimiev told journalists with satisfaction that the federal center would not be in hurry to take "one-sided decisions" relating to Tatarstan in the future. (Interfax, October 29) Tatarstan may have scored a victory, but the publicity over the affair may yet serve the Russian government’s purposes by attracting attention to the problem of non-payment and frightening other, less powerful, enterprises into paying up.

Call for Military Police Force.