Lawmakers Veto Yeltsin Referendum Idea

Escalating Russia’s gravest political crisis, an uncowed Congress of People’s Deputies voted Friday to bar President Boris N. Yeltsin from calling a nationwide referendum that could cut short its term, as a furious Yeltsin had demanded the day before.

But simultaneously, parleys between the reformist president and the conservative-dominated Parliament began behind closed doors at 8:30 a.m. and lasted until the evening as leaders here searched for an end to the paralysis of Russia’s fragile democracy.

Fingered by Yeltsin on Thursday as the mastermind of efforts to torpedo his economic reforms, Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov prodded the Congress to vote 529-298 to amend the referendum law to prevent public votes of confidence in the legislature, presidency or Constitutional Court, or plebiscites that would force their replacement through early elections.

With that alteration, “the referendum suggested by Yeltsin now has no legal basis,” asserted Mikhail A. Mityukov, chairman of the Russian legislature’s committee on legislation.

Russian Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin, one of Yeltsin’s staunchest allies in the chamber, protested that his fellow Congress members had “thrown down the gantlet to the president and to the Russian people as well.” Radical Marina Salye of St. Petersburg said the amendment violates the people’s constitutional right to decide vital issues.

Often surly and ironfisted as he conducted the Congress’ proceedings, Khasbulatov forced a second, successful vote on the referendum law on the grounds that deputies hadn’t known what they were voting on when they rejected the measure minutes before. The Parliament, dominated by former Communist Party members and officials, has now proven “it will no longer accept general secretaries, dictators or czars,” Khasbulatov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Despite plenty of such overblown rhetoric, some who took the microphone at the Grand Kremlin Palace protested that tinkering with laws won’t solve Russia’s enormous, daunting problems.

It was the refusal by the Congress on Wednesday to confirm Yeltsin’s acting prime minister, Yegor T. Gaidar, that sparked the president’s surprise announcement that he would take his case to the people and ask them to choose between him and the Congress. The loser would have to face early elections in March.

Deputies emerged from their Friday talks with Yeltsin reporting that he was now ready to drop that head-on challenge to Parliament, if Gaidar is allowed to remain as acting head of a government for up to six months. A visibly fatigued Yeltsin said in a televised interview that he wants Gaidar to head the government at least until April, when the Congress is next scheduled to meet.

For the first time, Yeltsin said he would be “thinking about” other candidates, but he said he wasn’t ready to nominate anyone yet.

Yeltsin also reportedly wants the Congress to suspend constitutional amendments it adopted earlier in the week that give the country’s standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, the power to veto his candidates for four key ministerial portfolios.

Yeltsin and Khasbulatov met Friday evening, and Yeltsin said on television that they would reconvene for serious negotiations today, accompanied by six advisers per side. Constitutional Court Chairman Valery D. Zorkin, who held separate talks with Yeltsin on Friday afternoon, will act as referee.