REDS FOIL KUCHMA’S CHOICE OF PRIVATIZATION CHIEF.

The Verkhovna Rada’s leftist deputies yesterday blocked President Leonid Kuchma’s nomination of Oleksandr Bondar to the post of chairman of the State Property Fund (SPF). That key agency administers state enterprises slated for privatization and handles the privatization process. In opposing the nomination, communist representatives stated that “the issue is solely an ideological one” since they are “against privatization in general”. (UNIAN, September 10; Eastern Economist Daily (Kyiv), September 11) The situation seems set to reproduce the one from the previous legislature, whose socialists and communists successfully blocked Kuchma’s nomination of reformer Volodymyr Lanoviy to the SPF post after a protracted tug of war.

UKRAINIAN ROCKET CRASH SETS BACK GLOBALSTAR PROGRAM.