Davos, Friday
FORMER Russian Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov said today that he was
a ''medium-term optimist'' and believed the country was bound to build a
working market economy.
But Fyodorov, the 35-year-old economic reformer who last week refused
to join a new conservative-dominated Government, said policies promised
by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin could bring ''a disaster in the
short term''.
''I have lots of optimism over the future of Russia in the medium
term,'' he told international business executives, several of whom
expressed anxiety over the prospects for investment, at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
''So much has already been put in place that nothing can stop a real
market economy from developing . . .
''But what I fear now is that we are going to lose a lot of time. We
face the prospect of several months of policies that could be a disaster
in the short term.''
Chernomyrdin is due to defend his new Government at the annual forum
and seek to reassure business and political leaders that he is
determined to press ahead with reform.
But the Prime Minister, shaped as an executive under the communist
system of old Soviet Union, has alarmed the reformists and the outside
world with talk of restoring price controls and subsidies and cheap
loans to ailing state industry.
In Paris, Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky has committed
his ideas for the future shape of Europe to paper -- redrawing a road
map to wipe out Austria, Slovenia, the Baltic states, the Czech
Republic, and Bosnia.
The French daily newspaper Le Monde carried a copy of the map, which
shrank the size of Poland and Romania and split former Yugoslavia
between the Serbs and the Croats.
A retired Swedish diplomat passed on a copy of the road plan, signed
and modified by Zhirinovsky, with the words ''UN out'' over former
Yugoslavia.
Slovenia tonight asked Zhirinovsky to leave its territory as soon as
possible, accusing his party of violating law and order in a restaurant
in Bled.
Earlier, Zhirinovsky, staying in a retreat once frequented by Marshal
Tito, proclaimed peace in the Balkans and Russia as the country that
would save the world.
He called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the former
Yugoslavia and said he would urge Russia to leave the United Nations if
the UN authorised air strikes against the Serbs.--Reuter.
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