REDS COMMISSION ACTION PLAN FOR NEW UNION.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and the Narodovlastie group of Duma deputies hosted in Moscow an “International Conference of National-Patriotic Forces” on July 4. Delegations of Communist and hard-left parties from eleven former Soviet republics attended. CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov and ex-USSR Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, currently head of Narodovlastie, were the keynote speakers. The conference–co-chaired by Zyuganov and Ukraine’s Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko–elected a standing coordinating committee made up of five representatives from each country.

The committee is mandated to work out an “action plan for deepening integration” among CIS and Baltic countries, with a view to restoring a “common political, economic and spiritual space” on former USSR territory. Conferees anticipated that overall “integration” will intensify after Boris Yeltsin will have finished his term as president of Russia. Nevertheless, they described the Russia-Belarus Union–established by Yeltsin with his Belarusan counterpart Alyaksandr Lukashenka–as a “prototype” of a renewed union of the ex-Soviet republics. (RIA and other Russian agencies, July 4)

NAZARBAEV ALL BUT GIVES UP ON CIS.