YELTSIN SACKS ENVOY.

President Boris Yeltsin has sacked his representative in Kemerovo oblast, Anatoly Malykhin. Yeltsin has complained that Malykhin failed to keep him informed about problems in Leninsk-Kuznetsky, a town in Malykhin’s Siberian bailiwick, but the immediate cause for the sacking is believed to be Malykhin’s statement last week that the man at the center of the controversy, Mayor Gennady Konyakhin, was legitimately elected. (Itar-Tass, September 26) Last week, Yeltsin ordered the procurator general and the heads of Russia’s law enforcement agencies to investigate allegations that Konyakhin had instituted a reign of terror in the town. There was speculation that Yeltsin was trying to establish a precedent for the president to sack an elected local official. But constitutional lawyers pointed out that Yeltsin’s order to Russia’s chief legal officer, the procurator general, was itself a violation of the supposed independence of the procuracy.

Kazakhstan to Introduce Natural Monopoly Regulation.