WORLD : No Police Patrols, Russia Asks
The Russian legislature voted today to ask Mikhail S. Gorbachev to suspend what it called unconstitutional and potentially destabilizing plans to mount joint army and police patrols in Soviet cities as early as Friday.
The effect of the vote was impossible to gauge in the increasingly tense Soviet political atmosphere, but it reflected anxiety among Russia’s federation president and other reformers that hard-liners were preparing to take control.
“Who knows what might happen in the next 24 hours?” federation President Boris N. Yeltsin asked during debate on the resolution. The Russian legislature, on a 130-13 vote, asked Gorbachev to suspend plans for the patrols while the issue is reviewed by the national Constitutional Surveillance Committee and considered by the elected governments of the 15 Soviet republics.
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