President Boris Yeltsin says he won't go to the United States next week with "an outstretched hand" for charity but will urge Americans to join hands with Russians to end the era of nuclear confrontation.
Yeltsin, who today marks one year in office as Russia's first popularly elected president, also continues taking swipes in his feud with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in a series of interviews with Russian and Western reporters.Yeltsin described Gorbachev's rule as "seven years of stagnation" and implied the former leader lacked the "personal courage" to impose real economic reform.
Yeltsin also said:
- He has slowed the pace of economic reforms because Russians on fixed incomes are living in "literal poverty."
- "Agreement can be reached" in talks in Washington next week with President Bush to complete a treaty on reducing strategic missiles by more than half by the end of the century. On Thursday, he sent Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev to meet with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in London to finalize details.
- Trials are possible for some former senior Communist Party members for violating human rights and conducting nuclear tests near populated areas.
"But this won't be on a mass scale," he told Canadian Press and other Western news organizations Thursday. "Why should we start a witch hunt?"
Although Russia needs a promised aid package of $24 billion, it "cannot agree to a number of demands of the International Monetary Fund," Yeltsin said. Among the series of fiscal austerity measures demanded is that Yeltsin free the price of oil and natural gas - a step he has resisted so far.
"I want to give a hand to the U.S. president and in my speech at the Congress I want to give a hand to all American people: Let's be partners and end this era of confrontation," he said.
Yeltsin stressed that his free-market economic reforms "are not empty promises," and denounced the last years of Gorbachev's "perestroika."