Yeltsin seeks truce as foes turn up the heat
Yeltsin seeks truce as foes turn up the heat
MOSCOW (AFP): President Boris Yeltsin called yesterday for a truce with his opponents and appealed to leaders across Russia's political spectrum to respect new ground rules based on compromise in place of extremism.
The appeal however came a day after former Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi issued a bitter attack on Yeltsin in an interview that raised tensions in the country and dashed hopes of an early consensus among leading political forces.
"We must above all rule out violence, extremism, the renewal of base passions and disorder" in the political process, Yeltsin said in an interview with Interfax news agency.
"Elections are the way to achieve political goals," he said, adding that all of Russia's politicians regardless of their convictions must make all efforts to avoid a repetition of the violence that rocked the capital last autumn.
The Russian leader cited a number of lessons that the country's political elite must draw from the bloody October 1993 parliamentary revolt, notably the need for stability and for a common purpose in strengthening the state.
Yeltsin said the state had a duty to protect its citizens from the kind of unrest that Russia experienced last autumn and admitted that turmoil which could have engulfed the nation had been halted only on a final chance.
"Had we not succeeded, what river of blood may have flowed across Moscow and all of Russia?" Yeltsin said.
His remarks came a day after the Kremlin published the eight- page draft text of a new Civil Peace Pact that Yeltsin has asked the main branches of government and leading political movements to agree to in order to stabilize the country.
"Today more than ever Russia needs civil accord," the preamble of the text stated.
"Struggle can result in only one thing: the destruction of Russia and the suffering of millions of Russians."
Yeltsin's proposed accord would not be law and amounts to a large-scale gentlemen's agreement on new and restrictive guidelines on how political discourse was to be conducted in the future.
The draft notably requests that signatories agree to:
o refrain from amending the new constitution,
o refrain from calling earlier-than-planned elections,
o refrain from manipulating the mass media for political ends,
o refrain from politicizing the 1991 Soviet coup and the 1993 revolt,
o refrain from diminishing Moscow's authority over the regions.
Those asked to sign the pact include the president, both houses of parliament, the government, the supreme court, regional governments and the main political parties and movements.
Yeltsin has admitted that even if these groups did back the pact it would be difficult to enforce in practice and he has sought instead to cast the accord as a morally-binding undertaking.