Yeltsin asks Kohl to back Russian Olympics

PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin has asked the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, to back Russia's bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games.

PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin has asked the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, to back Russia's bid to host the 2004 Olympic Games.

The presidential press office said yesterday that Mr Yeltsin made his request in a telephone conversation with the German chancellor, whom he views as a personal friend.

The two men also discussed bilateral issues and Mr Yeltsin's state of health. The Russian president has been in hospital since September 13th and is due to undergo a heart operation in the next two months.

St Petersburg, Russia's second city, has bid to hold the 2004 Summer Olympics, although it faces competition from nine other cities. Rome, Cape Town and Stockholm are said to be the favourites.

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The Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, visiting the International Olympic Committee in Switzerland earlier this week, said Russia's hid for the games was part of its drive to become a "normal, civilised society".

"Russia has taken the path of democracy, of creating a market economy," he said. "Our choice is for all time, and the processes that have been started in Russia are irreversible. The holding of the Olympic Games (in St Petersburg) would he a forum that would give worldwide recognition of that fact."

The winning city will be announced in September, 1997.

Meanwhile, Russia's security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, pointedly refused to comply with President Yeltsin's order to get down to work with other members of the government, by failing to attend a meeting of all security ministers chaired by the prime minister yesterday.

The pretext given by Gen Lebed's aides was that he was busy working on documents signed with the Chechen separatist leader, Mr Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, on Thursday. But Gen Lebed's absence from the first meeting of a newly-created - Defence Council was a robust reply to the dressing down he got from Mr Yeltsin for a series of statements criticising the government, threatening NATO with economic sanctions, and warning that the army was on the verge of mutiny.

Meanwhile, the Defence Council proceeded disastrously, with no agreement emerging between the rival claims of the military for more money and political demands for cutbacks.

Earlier several senior generals were dismissed, at the behest of the popular new Defence Minister, Gen Igor Rodionov, for resisting moves to cut the army.