Soviet Party Will Seek U.S.-Style Presidency

The Soviet Communist Party will propose a strong, American-style executive presidency for the country to ensure the implementation of its sweeping political and economic reforms, senior party officials said Thursday.

The plan, included in the draft platform approved by the party’s policy-making Central Committee this week, calls for the direct election of a president with far great powers than those that Mikhail S. Gorbachev now has.

Ivan T. Frolov, a party secretary, the editor of the party newspaper Pravda and a key Gorbachev adviser, said that the proposal will be discussed by the Supreme Soviet (Parliament) when it reconvenes next week and that the required constitutional amendments could be adopted later this spring.

Frolov, speaking with foreign correspondents after the three-day meeting of the party’s policy-making Central Committee, said that most party leaders now agree that Gorbachev must be given greater powers to press ahead with his reforms lest they become stalled yet again.

He warned that the leadership’s slowness in implementing perestroika , the reform program undertaken by Gorbachev when he assumed the leadership five years ago, could split the party if radicals break away as one major group is now threatening to form their own party.

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister and one of Gorbachev’s closest political allies, told Secretary of State James a. Baker III, who is now in Moscow for arms reduction talks, that the leadership has decided a strong presidency had become necessary if the reforms were to be broadened and accelerated.

“One of the ways to make reform work better and to overcome many of the obstacles we face would be to increase the executive power of the presidency,” Shevardnadze told Baker in their initial meeting, according to a senior U.S. official in the Baker party.

“We are looking forward to the day in the not too distant future when the president would be elected on a national basis,” Shevardnadze was quoted as telling Baker.

“The American model is something we look to.”

Shevardnadze also told Baker of the party’s plans to negotiate a new federal relationship between the central government and the Soviet Union’s 15 constituent republics in an effort to defuse the serious ethnic problems the country faces and to proceed with economic reforms, including a new price system.

But criticism grew on Thursday that the Central Committee had not gone far enough in its reforms, even though it had voted to end the party’s long monopoly on political power.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the radical populist, who was the only Central Committee member to vote against draft platform, said that measures had been so weakened in compromises with conservatives that they not only would not solve the country’s problems but would deceive people into believing that they were solving them.

“I think this platform represents perhaps not a step but a half-step forward, while it lessens political tensions before the party congress,” he told the Associated Press.

“The transition to a multi-party system is just a question of time. It is inevitable and necessary. We should use all chances still open to renew the party so that it will have a democratic basis. We should try this chance.”

Other radicals, however, were preparing to break away, considering the establishment of their own party as soon as legislation is adopted for a multi-party system.

Gorbachev, addressing the closing session of the meeting, seemed to share much of the radicals’ impatience.

Warning the party not to delay any longer on the political and economic reforms before it, he called for immediate action on the platform and other issues.

“We cannot waste any more time,” he told the Kremlin meeting. “It is fair to say to the party Central Committee that it is not permissible to be late now. It is necessary to take the lead in stormy and complicated process in order to support healthy trends, consolidate them and try to overcome or inhibit destructive trends.”

Discussing the proposal for a stronger presidency, senior party officials said Thursday that the party platform, approved Wednesday by the Central Committee, would call for a presidential system in which the prime minister and other key ministers, including those in charge of defense, state security, communications and transport, would form a cabinet and report to the president rather than Parliament.

The president would be given considerable additional powers, including the authority to veto legislation and to declare states of emergency, which Gorbachev does not now have himself.

The party will also propose that, once the new post is created, a president be elected immediately by the Congress of People’s Deputies, the national legislature, for a limited term, perhaps only a year, while preparations are made for the first direct, nationwide election.

The draft party platform, although approved on Wednesday, has not yet been published, and full details are likely only when the measure is put to the Supreme Soviet next Wednesday.

The party has a strong majority in both the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s Deputies, but these measures could prove controversial because of the deep antipathy toward concentrating too much power in the hands of a single person.

When the discussion of a possible “strong presidency” began last autumn, one prominent liberal, an avowed Gorbachev supporter, wrote an essay titled, “Excuse me, please, esteemed Mr. President, but that is too, too much power, even for you. . . . “

A considerable debate has been continued, for and against, over greater powers for the Soviet presidency, which would be transformed from a parliamentary presidency, typical of socialist systems, into a Western-style executive presidency.

“We call Mikhail Gorbachev ‘president’ in English, but he is really much more of a ‘chairman,’ his title in Russian, because he has very limited legal authority,” a senior Central Committee official commented. “In precise terms, his only real power is to preside over meetings of the Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, and he needs much, much more authority.”

Gorbachev supporters cite the outbreak of anti-Armenian violence in Azerbaijan last month as a situation in which he could have acted earlier had he the authority to declare a state of emergency without convening a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet as required under the constitution.

But he also wants the authority to veto some of the resolutions and legislation adopted by the Supreme Soviet and Congress, according to party officials, who express fear that the new parliamentary democracy here could get out of hand.

Shevardnadze, speaking to the Central Committee, strongly endorsed the proposal for a strong presidential system, according to an account of his speech published Thursday by Pravda.

“Democracy and political impotence are incompatible,” he said. “I strongly support institution of the (enhanced) presidency. Time does not allow us to procrastinate in the issue.”

Alexander N. Yakovlev, another of Gorbachev’s closest associates, argued that the crisis-paced character of Soviet society required a leader who was able to act quickly on domestic and foreign problems. “These are matters requiring great freedom of maneuver,” he said.