LEBED PLANS TO LAUNCH NEW PARTY.

Former Kremlin security chief Aleksandr Lebed announced long awaited plans on December 27 to form a new party, to be called the Russian Popular Republican party (RPRP). Lebed told a congress of the nationalist Home and Motherland movement near Moscow that the new party would chart a "third way" between the Communist party and "the so-called democratic elite." He said it would be a centrist party that would campaign for constitutional reform to reduce the powers of the president and make the government more accountable to parliament. Lebed asserted that he had been promised backing by many banks and wealthy financiers. He plans to use Home and Motherland, 90 percent of whose members are reserve army officers, as a springboard for the RPRP. A conference will be held soon to adopt the party charter and the founding congress is planned for the first half of March. (Russian Television, December 27; The [London] Times, New York Times, Financial Times, December 28)

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