KRAVCHUK: RUSSIA CANNOT RENOUNCE CIS TREATY.

Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk said yesterday that "reasonable forces" in the Russian parliament would prevail over radicals who want to renounce the 1991 Belavezha treaty. (15) The treaty, originally signed by Kravchuk, Stanislau Shushkevich, and Boris Yeltsin, abolished the USSR and established the CIS. Earlier this week, Gennady Zyuganov said to the press that his victorious Communist Party would use its new strength in the Duma "ultimately to seek the renunciation of Belavezha in accordance with the will of the USSR population as expressed in the referendum [on the preservation of the USSR] of March 17, 1991." (16) Kravchuk said in response that the founding CIS treaty belonged to the sphere of international relations — a sphere outside of the Duma’s authority — and that any unilateral abrogation of the treaty would be invalid. In related news, Konstantin Zatulin, who headed the committee for relations with the CIS states in the outgoing Duma, reportedly lost his race for reelection to a communist. (17)

Latvian Government Formed At Last.