UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT JOINS CIS INTERPARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY.

With 230 votes in favor–just four more than the minimum of 226 needed for passage–and 42 opposed, the Ukrainian parliament yesterday approved its accession to the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly (IPA). The balance of the 450 deputies declined to vote. The highly emotional session nearly degenerated into the fistfights which had accompanied some of the earlier debates on the same subject. The parliament’s leftist side had since 1992 attempted to make this move. Its ultimate success yesterday came about when a small number of deputies switched sides at the suggestion of President Leonid Kuchma and Prime Minister Valery Pustovoytenko.

The executive branch was acting on the basis of a tacit understanding with Moscow, offering this symbolic satisfaction in return for Russia’s recent ratification of an interstate treaty with Ukraine (see The Monitor, February 18). Similarly, Ukraine’s leftist parliamentary leadership redoubled its own efforts to force the measure through, as a quid pro quo for the Russian communists’ decisive support for treaty ratification in the Duma. Ukraine’s accession to the IPA is, however, meaningless in practical terms because that St. Petersburg-based body is a talking shop with no powers (UNIAN, March 3).–VS

SCANDALS ERUPT AROUND UKRAINIAN TELEVISION.