PRESIDENTS WARN AGAINST PRECEDENT SET WITH BEREZOVSKY AFFAIR.

Karimov took the opportunity of Shevardnadze’s visit to break his silence over the Kremlin’s violation of CIS collegial prerogatives in replacing CIS Executive Secretary Boris Berezovsky. “Such a precedent is intolerable,” Karimov said. “I told Boris Yeltsin that the CIS has a charter and procedural rules, and these must be respected.” Karimov suggested that “it was not Yeltsin who made that decision, but Berezovsky’s enemies.” If intended as an excuse to the Russian president, such an excuse has dubious value because it implies that Yeltsin is no longer in complete control in the Kremlin.

Shevardnadze, who had already taken sharp issue with Yeltsin’s move (see the Monitor, March 9), added on this occasion that “such a grotesque incident must not be allowed to recur.” He suggested that the next CIS executive secretary should be a representative of a country other than Russia, appointed by the member countries’ presidents collegially. That qualification is clearly not met in the current acting executive secretary, Ivan Karatchenya–who was appointed unilaterally by Yeltsin, had served the Russian president directly from 1992 to 1998 and is formally the citizen of a state (Belarus) in “union” with Russia (Itar-Tass and other Russian agencies, March 9).

ANGER IN KAZAKHSTAN.