Gorbachev calls top party officials to snap meeting

Press, 30 September 1988, Page 8

Gorbachev calls top party officials to snap meeting

NZPA-Reuter Moscow The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, pressing ahead with a drive to slash the Communist bureaucracy, has summoned top officials to Moscow in an apparent attempt to win endorsement for high-speed reform of the party.

In what Soviet sources said was a snap decision, he has called a previously unscheduled meeting today of the 300-strdng policy-making Central Committee to discuss the issue. Five days earlier, Mr Gorbachev, just back from Siberia where he heard bitter public complaints that his “perestroika” programme was bringing few results, told media editors “we want to move faster” in trimming the party apparatus. Analysts said there seemed no doubt he wanted the committee, often called the party’s parliament, formally to endorse this next step in his reforms. In spite of the apparent urgency in calling the session, there was no sign in Moscow that it was because of any crisis in the leadership. Mr Gorbachev, flanked by almost the entire ruling Politburo, was shown relaxed and smiling on television on Wednesday touring an industrial exhi-

bition in Moscow with the East German leader, Erich Honecker.

The only notable absentee was Kremlin No. 2, Yegor Ligachev, who has staked out a more conservative line on over-all reform and questioned Mr Gorbachev’s flexible foreign policy towards the West. Soviet sources said earlier this month 67-year-old Mr Ligachev had left on holiday when Mr Gorbachev returned. There seemed little doubt he would be back for today’s meeting. The Kremlin leader himself appeared firmly in control, giving Mr Honecker a frank but determined evaluation of his programme for reshaping Soviet society. The official ' news agency Tass announced the removal of a old-time party chief in the far east Khabarovsk region — the latest in a long series of personnel changes clearly working in Mr Gorbachev’s favour. However, analysts in

Moscow said there were puzzling aspects of the sudden convening of the Central Committee meeting, or plenum, news of which first came from a Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gepnady Gerasimov, in New York. A party conference in Moscow at the end of June authorised the Politburo itself to prepare and implement a new structure for the Central Committee’s permanent apparatus. In his speech to the editors on September 23, Mr Gorbachev said the Politburo had already voted a decision on the changes, which would include personnel cuts in Moscow and in regional and local party organisations. Conference resolutions made no reference to the calling of a plenum to approve the Politburo’s decision. “It would seem certain that at this delicate stage Gorbachev wants to be seen to be listening to the opinion of the party’s top

people around the country, even if strictly he did not need to,” one analyst said. The reform of the apparatus is aimed at reducing the party’s role in the day-to-day running of the country’s affairs where until now it and its bureaucracy have had the final word for decades. Mr Gorbachev and his supporters argue that only by giving freedom of action to government bodies at all levels as well as to farmers and industrial managers can the economy be pulled out of stagnation. 'This will mean that tens of thousands, and perhaps millions, of party officials will have to be moved to new jobs or retired, making way for new reformminded figures. In Moscow, the 20-plus different departments of the Central Committee bureaucracy, from the chemical industry to culture, are expected to be cut to about six.