SUMMIT PICKS NEW EXECUTIVE SECRETARY.

The presidents of the twelve member countries held the overdue CIS summit on April 2 in Moscow; as expected, they agreed to release Boris Berezovsky from the post of executive secretary in accordance to CIS rules and procedures, thus formalizing Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s unilateral March 4 firing. The presidents unanimously accepted Russia’s nomination of Yuri Yarov to the post. Yarov will concurrently serve as chairman of the CIS Executive Committee, a new body which will theoretically exercise supervisory powers over CIS bodies in Moscow and Minsk. However, the staffs and budgets of the Executive Secretariat and of all other CIS bodies are to be drastically curtailed.

Yarov, a Yeltsin loyalist, was appointed to those two posts on his 57th birthday. He was born on April 2, 1942 in Leningrad, made a career as an industrial executive there. After the August 1991 events, Yarov became Yeltsin’s representative in the city of St. Petersburg and in the Leningrad region and went on to serve as deputy prime minister of Russia in 1992-96–as first deputy head of the presidential administration in 1996-98, and as the president’s representative in the Federation Council since December 1998 (Itar-Tass, RIA, April 2-3).

YELTSIN, LUKASHENKA DEFEATED OVER SERBIA.