TREATY BETWEEN FEDERAL AUTHORITIES AND SVERDLOVSK NEARING CONCLUSION.

The governor of the Sverdlovsk Oblast, Eduard Rossel, says he expects to visit President Yeltsin in the hospital soon and to set a date for the signing by his region and the federal center of a comprehensive package of treaties regulating their future relations. The Sverdlovsk Oblast is a major industrial center in the Urals and a source of almost every kind of hard currency-earning raw material; its capital, Yekaterinburg, is Russia’s fourth largest city. Sverdlovsk hopes to become the first of Russia’s krais and oblasts to sign the kind of power-sharing agreement with the center that has been pioneered by ethnically-based republics such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan (which borders on Sverdlovsk). Rossel said five out of twenty agreements on individual spheres of competence have already been signed by his region and the center, and that the remaining fifteen will be discussed by the Russian government this week. Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg, is anxious to sign a similar treaty with the center, as is the Kaliningrad Oblast and a number of others. (8)

Russia’s Latest Threat to Pull Out of CFE Treaty.