Yeltsin Seeks Power-Sharing Deal With Rival

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, all but abandoning a plan to take his case for accelerated reform directly to the people, called Tuesday for an emergency parliamentary session next month to ratify a power-sharing accord to be negotiated with his chief political foe.

At a 20-minute evening meeting at the Kremlin, Yeltsin and Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, the president’s conservative nemesis, agreed to give their envoys 10 days to hammer out an agreement to end Russia’s constitutional crisis and paralysis of power, Yeltsin’s press service said.

The rival leaders are to exchange draft proposals today. Yeltsin’s press secretary, Vyacheslav V. Kostikov, said the president proposed that the Congress of People’s Deputies be convened in the first 10 days of March, at the latest, to approve the final product.

Far from being a dry legal matter, the gist of the bitter Yeltsin-Khasbulatov feud is over what shape Russia’s post-Soviet government will have and, as a result, whether the populist president or conservative-led lawmakers will wield the upper hand in crafting pro-market reforms.

Khasbulatov “wants to turn the Russian president into the Queen of England and transfer all executive power to the government (Cabinet), which should fully obey the Parliament,” Viktor Bondarev of the pro-Yeltsin Moscow tabloid Kuranty charged.

The crisis blew up last autumn because Yeltsin’s supporters are in a decided minority in the legislative branch, which is dominated by former Communist Party apparatchiks, their loyalists and vociferous right-wing nationalists. Russia also is still saddled with a much-amended Soviet-era constitution that grants the president, although elected by universal suffrage, powers inferior to those of the double-tier legislature.

Yeltsin, who interrupted a winter vacation for Tuesday’s session, had wanted to break the resulting government deadlock with a nationwide referendum; a largely hostile Congress, cajoled by Khasbulatov, gave its assent last December, instructing the two men and Constitutional Court Chairman Valery D. Zorkin to devise a new constitutional balance of power.

But since then, Yeltsin’s followers have had second thoughts about the wisdom of summoning Russians, fed up with grave economic hardships and power games in Moscow, to the polls. To try to abort the whole referendum idea, Khasbulatov on Monday proposed asking Russians, point-blank, if they trust the president.

In Yeltsin’s brief meeting with Khasbulatov, which the legislator said succeeded in achieving a “common language,” Yeltsin stressed that, until a new power-sharing formula is negotiated, preparations for the April plebiscite will continue.

But some of Yeltsin’s opponents called that declaration a bluff.

“It is hard to find a more diplomatic way of canceling the referendum,” said Sergei N. Baburin of the Russian Unity bloc, one of Yeltsin’s most blistering right-wing critics in Parliament. “It is now clear to everybody, including Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin), that the people will ignore the referendum as a whole, and he will lose for sure.”

Baburin said that provincial governors had been inundating Moscow with telegrams lately warning against proceeding with the April vote. Leaders of autonomous ethnic homelands like Tatarstan have also withheld support or opposed the vote outright. “Yeltsin finally saw the referendum could bring a crushing defeat,” Baburin said.

Vera Kuznetsova, who follows Russian politics for the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said the question splitting Yeltsin and Khasbulatov can be summed up succinctly: “Will there be presidential power in Russia, or a Soviet republic like the one that existed until recently when the government was under the strict control of Parliament?

“The position of Khasbulatov is clear: The president’s authority must be limited to such functions as foreign policy, with the proviso that all major foreign treaties are ratified by Parliament,” Kuznetsova continued. “Thus, the president should fulfill purely representative functions.”

Yeltsin, for his part, has been battling for a triple-pronged constitutional change that would recognize the president as full-fledged head of state; declare the now sitting Congress the last and replace it with the smaller, bicameral Supreme Soviet as the supreme legislative power, and incorporate a recently signed federal treasury in the constitution.

Yeltsin was able in December to win over the conservative Congress only with Khasbulatov’s lobbying legerdemain, and the body remained hostile to fundamental pillars of reform like a constitutional amendment allowing the free purchase and sale of land. So getting the Parliament now to sign its own death warrant seems impossible.

But Oleg V. Plotnikov, leader of the moderate-opposition faction Smena (Change), said Yeltsin’s gambit Tuesday seemed to be made from a position of strength, since Khasbulatov’s rating with voters is undoubtedly much worse.

“Yeltsin is getting rid of the unpredictable and dangerous referendum and, at the same time, demanding new advantages or special powers in exchange,” Plotnikov said. “What is bad about it is that people get easily enchanted by the very term compromise. They get so punch-drunk that they fail to see that in reality, it is no compromise but an obvious trick.”

Plotnikov said he had heard that the “irreconcilable opposition” of Baburin and like-minded deputies might sabotage any Yeltsin-Khasbulatov deal by staying away from the Congress, thus depriving the body of a quorum and forcing the separation of powers issue to go to a referendum as originally mandated by the Congress in December.