RUSSIAN DUMA CHAIRMAN SUPPORTS MOLDOVA’S BREAKUP.

Ivan Rybkin, chairman of Russia’s Duma and head of a governmental electoral bloc, has conveyed his support for Transdniester’s secession from Moldova in a message of greetings to a Russian irredentist forum there. Informing the Transdniester Compatriots’ Congress about last week’s Duma resolution urging recognition of Transdniester as a separate state, Rybkin promised to delegate Duma representatives to attend the planned December 24 elections and referendum, in which local Russians are expected to vote for Transdniester’s accession in its own right to CIS economic, political, and military bodies. Transdniester Compatriots’ Congress chief Anna Volkova expressed the organization’s thanks to Vladimir Zhirinovsky for having initiated the Duma’s resolution. (16)

Compatriots’ Congresses form a chain of Russian nationalist groups in CIS countries. They are politically close to Moscow hardliners and are represented through delegates in the Compatriots’ Council, a standing advisory body to the Duma’s CIS Affairs Committee. The Kamchatka-born Volkova, vice-chair of Transdniester’s Supreme Soviet, is a teacher of "scientific socialism" reputed in Tiraspol as "our Nina Andreeva." Ethnic Russians, mostly settlers from Russia, form 25.5 percent of Transdniester’s population acording to the last (1989) USSR census.

Outline of Georgian-Abkhaz Compromise Disclosed.