MOSCOW, Sept 20 (AFP)
Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of the former Soviet leader who died Monday after a lengthy battle with leukemia, achieved a level of popularity among her countrymen as she fought her illness that she never knew while she enjoyed good health.
Feted in the West for her elegance and style, the president�s wife was viewed with suspicion in a Soviet Union of poverty and shortages.
Eight years after Gorbachev left the Kremlin, the tide turned as Raisa, aged 67, lay in a German hospital, struck down by an illness that she had done so much to combat in her charitable work.
With public opinion shifting, even President Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev�s bitter rival and the instrument of his eviction from power, was moved to send a message of sympathy.
From the moment Mikhail Gorbachev became master of the Kremlin in 1985, Raisa, smiling and spontaneous, was stealing the scene on the international stage from her powerful husband.
Raisa broke the mould of Soviet wives, dumpy �babushkas� who as pundits maliciously noted confined their main public appearance to walking behind their husband�s funeral cortege on Red Square.
Sweeping aside Soviet conventions, her grace and intelligence contributed to the success of her husband�s charm offensive with western audiences.
�First lady� in the country of state enterprises and collective farms, Raisa�s tastes were far from proletarian. She became notorious for huge credit card shopping sprees abroad and a love of jewellery and haute couture fashion.
The mistress of the Kremlin had a fondness for the biggest names in fashion, from Pierre Cardin to Yves Saint-Laurent, whose �Opium� fragrance was a particular favourite with Raisa.
She also helped boost the development of fashion in the Soviet Union with the launch of a Russian-language version of the German magazine Burga, and the organisation of a YSL exhibition in Moscow in 1986.
But the �Red Tsarina� who courted the West was viewed with suspicion and even hostility in her native land.
Her habit of changing her outfit four times a day and evident taste for the good life went down badly in a country brought up on hardship and which took a dim view of personal wealth.
And when the general secretary of the Communist Party admitted that �I discuss everything with my wife, including Soviet affairs at the highest level,� conservative circles in the Soviet Union went into shock.
Censors cut the admission from the version of the NBC interview broadcast in the Soviet Union, but the cat was out of the bag.
Raisa exercised huge influence over her powerful husband. She successfully opposed the launch of a massive Stalinist project to divert the waters of Siberian rivers to parched lands in the south.
Under her influence, 40 percent of funds earmarked for health were reserved for maternal and child care. Sections of Gorbachev�s speech to the 27th Communist Party Congress in 1987 on women clearly bore her stamp.
MOSCOW, Sept 20 (AFP)
US investigators have provided their Russian counterparts with no proof that Russia had been involved in a widely-reported money-laundering scandal, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Monday.
�Thankfully, reports in the mass media about money-laundering through the Bank of New York were not confirmed� during a trip to the United States by senior Russian law enforcement officials, Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying.
Money-laundering was a problem which concerned not just Russia, the premier said after a meeting at the Kremlin with President Boris Yeltsin.
Russia has been mired in money-laundering scandals since the publication last month of a series of reports that investigators suspected were probing allegations that up to 15 billion dollars in ill-gotten gains had been laundered through US banks.
According to the allegations the money included billions of dollars of mob money, International Monetary Fund loans to Russia, corporate embezzlement and political graft by Russia�s business and political elite.
BISHKEK, Sept 20 (AFP)
One Kyrgyz soldier was killed and five were wounded in clashes with Islamic rebels holding four Japanese geologists hostage in southern Kyrgyzstan, a security official said on Monday.
Bolot Dzhanuzakov, head of the national security council, described the situation in the remote mountainous southern region of the Central Asian republic as �very tense� following three separate clashes between the rebels and Kyrgyz soldiers on Sunday.
One soldier was killed and four were wounded as the guerillas in Tajikistan shot at Kyrgyz troops across the border at the Uzun-Murun pass, Dzhanuzakov said. The rebels were later driven back into the hills.
Another soldier was wounded when up to 60 rebels attempted to destroy Kyrgyz military equipment by attacking troops for more than three hours Sunday evening near the village of Gas in the southern region.
The rebels also continued their efforts to advance to the Uzbek enclave of Sokh on Sunday evening.
Gulbanu ABENOVA
ASTANA, Sept 20 (THE GLOBE)
�I should quote the President, that this is a criminal-legal issue, but not a political issue and it is not the President�s competence,� the press-secretary of the head of the state announced regarding the President�s attitude to the arrest and discharge of the ex-Prime Minister.
We remind you, that on September 10, 1999 the former Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, a famous representative of the opposition Akezhan Kazhegeldin was arrested in Moscow. In two days he was discharged by the General Prosecutor of Kazakhstan due to Kazhegeldin�s disease, though the criminal case laid against him was not closed.
�I as a man dealing with policy have many questions in this regard. If we consider the case from the political point of view, the diagnose �stenocardia�, a bout of hypertension was observed on September 10, while on September 8 Mr. Kazhegeldin submitted a certificate proving that he was absolutely healthy. This certificate was signed by Moscow doctors, though he arrived from London only on September 10,� Asylbek Bisenbaev stated.
According to Mr. Bisenbaev, it is not easy to get into the Kremlin Central Clinical Hospital. It is a long process. To do this it is required to agree this with the Department on the President�s Affairs and to get corresponding visas. It takes more than one day, the press secretary believes. In his opinion, the ex-PM of Kazakhstan was ready for these events, as everything was regulated so fast. �Thus, it was a planned performance,� he emphasised.
As far as the further development of events is concerned, Mr. Bisenbaev referred to the announcement of the General Prosecutor Mr. Hitrin, who having talked with Mr. Kazhegeldin had considered it possible to discharge him taking into consideration the condition of his health. �Mr. Kazhegeldin is an absolutely healthy man as a candidate to deputies, but he is completely ill when the criminal case is concerned,� he remarked.
Mr. Bisenbaev says that now we observe the same situation, as a year ago, when he was nominated to the President. �If this man were interested to be elected, the accusation could be abandoned, as it was laid before the election was appointed. It seems that the man just did not want to participate in the election and made a political performance,� Mr. Bisenbaev believes.
He considers registered deputies according to RPPK parties� lists as people, who are dissimilar to ideology. �Frankly speaking, this list is absolutely incomprehensible to me, as a politician. From the political point of view, any organisation should have the common ideology or, at least, common political values, which are to unite them,� the former leader of the Liberal Movement of Kazakhstan emphasises.
In his opinion, the break off of RPPK was predetermined by political factors, as this party united people with different political platforms and the break off of this political party could be predicted long ago. �They tried to unite things which cannot be united. Then there was a situation, when people financed by a Swiss bank, were put in a single jar,� the press secretary resumed.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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