TOP UKRAINIAN REFORMER QUITS, KUCHMA PLANS REMEDIAL MEASURES.

Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Pynzennik, one of Ukraine’s leading economic reformers, resigned yesterday in frustration over leftist obstruction of reform legislation in parliament and the government’s passivity in dealing with it. The most immediate issues at stake involve the 1997 budget and tax legislation, which Socialist and Communist deputies refuse to amend in line with reform requirements. That inaction is jeopardizing international lending to Ukraine. Beyond these top-priority issues, President Leonid Kuchma and parliamentary groups supporting him agreed at a meeting yesterday that the leftists had managed to block the reforms in general.

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