Yeltsin Backs Stringent Budget, Predicts Economic Turnaround in '95
Bracing for a brawl with lawmakers in the coming weeks over the future of Russian reforms, President Boris Yeltsin tried today to rally support for his plans by offering a sunny economic forecast for the year ahead.</br></br>"In 1995 we will start an offensive," Yeltsin told hundreds of senior industrial and political figures in a magnificent marble hall at the Kremlin where the Central Committee of the Communist Party once met. "We will complete financial stabilization and move on to creating conditions for economic revival and growth."</br></br>Yeltsin's assessment, which he has offered before, came as his administration and the parliament locked horns over the government's proposed 1995 budget, an ambitious anti-inflation blueprint that has drawn political critics from all sides.</br></br>The president's speech today, and his unstinting remarks against inflation, suggest that he plans to fight hard for the budget and has not abandoned the main goal of reformers inside Russia and their allies in the West: a tough financial stabilization program designed to close Moscow's yawning budget deficit and clamp down on state handouts.</br></br>Worries about Yeltsin's commitment to such an austerity program were revived this month by a reshuffle of his cabinet that removed some reformers and elevated others.