AIRCRAFT ENGINE MANUFACTURER AT CENTER OF PRIVATIZATION BATTLE.

A lawyer for the Rybinsk Motors joint-stock company said Monday that the company would protest a January 15 decision opening the way for the government to sell its 37 percent share in the company. The decision was made by Russia’s Supreme Court of Arbitration. Yaroslavl-based Rybinsk Motors is a major manufacturer of aircraft engines in Russia and its fate has been at the center of an intense battle over the privatization of key Russian defense enterprises. Shares in the company were originally offered for sale in the summer of 1995, but plant management fought the sale in court and managed to delay the action. The management claimed former First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais had been behind a decision to leave the company off of a list of strategic defense plants exempted from early sale. Gazprom is thought to have been a prospective buyer of the Rybinsk plant, and it has been speculated that Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets find themselves on different sides of the barricades concerning the sale. (14)

CIS Summit Ostracizes Abkhazian "Separatism."