UKRAINE…

In what may be more a political tactic than spasm of morality, the left-dominated parliament established a committee to investigate money-laundering. The target of the investigation appears to be Oleksandr Volkov, chairman of President Leonid Kuchma’s re-election campaign. Volkov, who is a member of parliament, served in the same capacity in Kuchma’s first campaign in 1994. The presidential election takes place October 31, and at least twelve members of parliament are running…. Pavlo Lazarenko, the disgraced former prime minister who fled Swiss and Ukrainian arrest warrants and now seeks political asylum in the United States, sent word to his supporters that he is dropping out of the presidential race.