…AS PARTY LEADERS SLAM MOSCOW ON NATO, RIGHTS ABUSES.

Meanwhile, conservative party chiefs from twenty-nine European countries lambasted Moscow in Paris yesterday, dismissing the Kremlin’s presumed right to veto NATO enlargement and criticizing its human rights abuses. Participants of the one-day meeting of the Democratic European Union (UDE), hosted by French prime minister Alain Juppe, declared that NATO threatened no country and that "decisions on enlargement will be for NATO and the applicant countries themselves." The UDE statement also asserted that the problems of Russia’s democratic transition "should not permit Russian leaders to claim special rules for themselves concerning the respect of human rights or the use of force." The last point was a clear reference to Russian military actions in Chechnya. (6)

Yeltsin and Yavlinsky Fight for Disaffected Vote.