Yeltsin Steps Into Thick of Belarus Crisis

As a major political crisis brewed on Russia’s western border, President Boris N. Yeltsin emerged Wednesday from more than two weeks of seclusion after open-heart surgery to declare himself ready to work and “in a fighting mood.”

The tough posture adopted by the 65-year-old president in a closely controlled videotape was immediately put to the test with the volatile showdown in neighboring Belarus, where authoritarian President Alexander G. Lukashenko is being threatened with impeachment by parliament and the courts.

In his first diplomatic undertaking since resuming presidential duties shortly after his Nov. 5 quintuple bypass operation, Yeltsin spoke with Lukashenko by phone and sought to avert a violent clash in the country that is Russia’s closest ally. Yeltsin urged Lukashenko to compromise with his adversaries for the sake of stability in the region.

Three other neighbors--Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania--also intervened to express their “profound concern” over the conflict that has Lukashenko’s entourage and the parliamentary opposition hunkered down at their respective headquarters and rival crowds of citizens demonstrating in the streets amid a heavy police presence in the Belarussian capital, Minsk.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin called Lukashenko and his adversary, parliament Speaker Semen Sharetsky, to mediation talks late Wednesday in the Russian city of Smolensk, about halfway between Moscow and Minsk. Sharetsky showed up, but Lukashenko sent word that he was “too busy,” the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

A long-running clash between Lukashenko and Belarussian legislators has come to a head over a constitutional referendum the president has pushed and that is set for a vote Sunday. The initiative would extend the president’s term by more than two years and give him the power to pack election commissions, courts and a new upper house of parliament.

Legislators and some members of Lukashenko’s own government have denounced the president’s appeal to the voters as unconstitutional and filed petitions to begin impeachment proceedings. The Belarussian Constitutional Court has agreed to hear the opposition’s case Friday, and any support it might give to the claims of anti-constitutional behavior could prompt at least a temporary suspension of Lukashenko’s presidential powers.

Despite growing discontent with his policies in one of the poorest successor states to the Soviet Union, Lukashenko has vowed that he will neither step down nor cancel the controversial referendum.

Belarus has the closest ties with Moscow of any of the former Soviet republics, but work on strengthening integration of the two nations’ customs and transportation has been stymied by the domestic political battle.

The head of a Russian parliamentary fact-finding mission, Galina V. Starovoitova, told journalists here that her delegation determined during a trip to Belarus this week that Belarussian citizens were overwhelmed by the conflict.

“Lukashenko doesn’t strive toward democracy and there is no hint of reform underway in Belarus,” she told a news conference, estimating that average monthly income in Minsk is less than $100 and is considerably less than that in the countryside.

Yeltsin made no direct reference to the Belarus unrest in the short interview he gave to the Russian Information Agency during a walk with his family outside Central Clinical Hospital, where he is convalescing.

But the Kremlin reported that Yeltsin urged Lukashenko “to show governing wisdom, find a path to compromise and avert a split in Belarussian society.”

The videotape of a bundled-up Yeltsin was shown on all major television news programs--except for still photographs, the first images of the Russian leader made public for about three weeks. He was accompanied by his wife, Naina, the younger of his two daughters, Tatyana Dyachenko, and a teenage granddaughter, Masha Okulov.

“I’m in a fighting mood,” he said in good humor.