DUMA REFUSES TO BE RUSHED.

Prime Minister Sergei Kirienko submitted, through Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev, a package of additional stabilization measures to the State Duma on August 10, urging it to consider them at a planned August 19-20 emergency session. For the Duma to meet then would entail a break in its summer vacation. The package consists of thirteen bills, eight of which have already received provisional parliamentary approval at an emergency session in mid-July. The rest are new bills, including an amendment to the law on the 1998 federal budget. (Russian agencies, August 11)

Leaders of Duma factions met yesterday. They objected that the request to hold an emergency session had come from Prime Minister Kirienko, rather than President Boris Yeltsin. They said they would call a meeting of the Duma Council to decide if and when to hold an emergency session of the full Duma only if requested to do so by the president. This seems a mere formality. More weighty were the objections voiced by the Communist and Yabloko factions that the Duma would need ten to twelve days in which to examine the government’s proposals before they could vote on them. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov complained that, in some cases, all Kirienko has produced is the title, not the text, of proposed bills. In the circumstances, Zyuganov said, it would make more sense to convene the Duma in early September rather than in August. (RTR, August 12)

KHRISTENKO PREDICTS FIGHTS OVER 1999 BUDGET.