The World - News from Sept. 11, 1989

Ivan Drach, a Ukrainian poet and political activist, was elected to lead a new grass-roots group fighting for greater autonomy for the Soviet republic, according to a spokesman in Moscow for the Ukrainian Helsinki Group that monitors human rights. He also said that Sergei Konyev, a member of the new Soviet Parliament, was chosen as a deputy to Drach. The group, initially called the Ukrainian Popular Movement for Perestroika, was renamed Rukh, Ukrainian for movement, on the final day of a three-day meeting in the republic’s capital, Kiev. Konyev and another speaker at the meeting have called for removal of the conservative Ukrainian Communist Party chief, Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky.