YELTSIN PROMISES TO CLEAR PUBLIC SECTOR WAGE ARREARS BY YEAR’S END.

President Boris Yeltsin yesterday signed a decree promising that all wage arrears to servicemen will be paid by September 1, and all those to other federal and local state employees (doctors, nurses, teachers and so on) by January 1, 1998. The timetable will be very difficult for the government to meet; nonetheless, it marks a revision of the proposal Yeltsin voiced on national television last week, when he insistently called for all state sector wage arrears to be paid off by October 1. First Deputy Premier Anatoly Chubais interjected on that occasion to say such a timetable was unrealistic. Yesterday, First Deputy Premier Boris Nemtsov, who met yesterday with Yeltsin in Petrozavodsk, where the president is on holiday, called the deadlines "tough but realistic." Nemtsov said that the government had stretched itself to the limit to find "all imaginable and unimaginable reserves" to eliminate "this disgraceful practice of nonpayment of wages." (Itar-Tass, Ekho Moskvy, July 8)

Russian Government Again Looks for Ways to Tighten Budget Discipline.