MOSCOW MOVES TO SETTLE FAR EAST STRIKES.

The governor of Russia’s Primorsky krai, Yevgenii Nazdratenko, returned from Moscow yesterday saying he had persuaded the Russian government to bail the region out of its present payments crisis.

The most visible feature of the crisis in Primorsky is a coalminers’ strike which, over the last two weeks, has idled 13,000 workers and shut down 11 of the region’s 14 mines. has provoked a two-week strike by coalminers. Simultaneously, 318 power workers are on a hunger strike at the Primorskaya electric power station, which supplies 60 percent of the region’s electricity. (Interfax, July 29)

President Yeltsin’s aide Aleksandr Livshits confirmed that the government had agreed to give the region emergency financial support, but took a slap at Nazdratenko by saying that the regional leadership was "partly responsible" for the crisis. Livshits said the failure to modernize and reform the coal and electricity industries was also to blame – which, he said, would be one of the first priorities of the new Russian government. Until the problem was resolved, the whole of Russia, and not just Primorsky krai, would suffer a repetition of such crises. (RTR, July 29)

Izvestiya Indicts Regional Boss.