YELTSIN OFF TO CHINA FOR TALKS WITH JIANG ZEMIN.

One week after he concluded an unprecedented round of talks with Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, Russian president Boris Yeltsin is to arrive in China this weekend for a summit meeting — the fifth — with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. The Russian delegation for the November 9-11 talks is a large one, and is to include First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, the director of Russia’s Federal Border Service, Andrei Nikolaev, and Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov. The Russian-Chinese Committee of Friendship, Peace, and Development is also to convene in Beijing during the summit meeting. The committee is chaired on the Russian side by Arkady Volsky, president of Russia’s Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs; he is to lead a delegation of nearly 60 leading Russian business figures to the November 10 meeting.

While in China Yeltsin is expected to sign with the Chinese leader a joint statement on international and bilateral problems, a document marking the demarcation of the Sino-Russian border, and a number of other intergovernmental agreements. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman indicated yesterday that the border agreement is of particular interest to Beijing insofar as it will signify, he said, "friendly and good-neighborly relations between the two countries" while "ensuring peace, stability, prosperity, and tranquillity in the border area." Demarcation of the border began in April of 1993 and, according to Chinese diplomatic sources, the final border marker was installed only in the last few days. There has been opposition to the border demarcation among regional officials in Russia’s Far East and, despite the commitment of the federal authorities to honor the relevant 1991 Sino-Soviet border treaty, the issue has been a source of some friction between Moscow and Beijing.

Bureaucratic Confusion Over Reorganization.