YAVLINSKY SAYS YELTSIN LIKELY TO SEEK THIRD TERM

. Russian parliamentarian Grigory Yavlinsky says Boris Yeltsin would be within his legal rights to seek reelection when his present term expires in 2000 and that it is "entirely possible" that Yeltsin will do so. The constitution prescribes a maximum of two terms in office and Yeltsin has said he will not run again. In Yavlinsky’s opinion, however, "[Yeltsin] has legitimate grounds. He has been elected only once according to the present constitution, which allows him to run twice."

Yavlinsky, who has already declared his own intention of running for president in 2000, was speaking in an interview with Moscow News. (Moskovskie novosti, No 38, September 21) He said the 2000 election will be quite different from the last one. In 1996, he said, the main question was who would get which bit of state-owned property. That question has been resolved in favor of the financiers who bankrolled Yeltsin’s campaign. Next time around, Yavlinsky predicted, the election will be fought over the question of "Who will introduce what rules of the game?" As a result, the next campaign will have the elements of a two-party election. "One party "will be trying to conserve the current rules of the game — corporate-criminal, corporate-oligarchic." The other party will be trying to change the rules of the game to introduce more competition, greater transparency, and equal access to the market for all players. "By the year 2000," Yavlinsky predicted, "there will be enough people out there who will really want different taxes, different rules of the game, stability, and no more need to coax everything out of the authorities. Today, you can make money only if you have close personal ties to the authorities, but it will not always be this way." (Moskovskie novosti, No 38, September 21)

U.S. and Russia Sign Arms Control Documents…