Economic Reform

MOSCOW -- Taking Russia and the world by surprise, economic reformer Yegor T. Gaidar resigned from the government yesterday, raising serious questions about President Boris N. Yeltsin's commitment to rapid reform.Mr. Gaidar's departure was particularly jolting, coming just a scant day after President Clinton left Moscow full of promises from Mr. Yeltsin to pursue economic reforms faster than ever."I cannot be in the government and in the opposition at the same time," Mr. Gaidar said in a letter to Mr. Yeltsin, adding that recent government policy was damaging economic progress and wasting millions of dollars.

BEIJING -- China's top leader, Deng Xiaoping, out of the public eye for a year, turned up last week in Shenzhen, the Chinese capital of capitalism. The visit is believed to underscore a growing commitment here to accelerating market-style economic reforms.Chinese leaders commonly journey south for the lunar New Year holiday, which falls this year on Feb. 4. Last year, Mr. Deng, on whose failing health most political questions here hinge, showed up at the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Party, Shanghai, looking frail and a bit glassy-eyed.

BEIJING -- In an effort to assess China's shaky reform program, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is in the midst of a five-day tour of Beijing and Shanghai.The head of the U.S. central bank is meeting his Chinese counterparts, as well as senior Communist Party and government leaders.Mr. Greenspan did not make public his impressions of the meetings, but a source in his delegation said the purpose of his trip was twofold: to demonstrate U.S. support for the capitalist-style economic reforms, which some observers feel are in danger of derailing, and to assess the economic prospects of the world's most dynamic -- and potentially most chaotic -- economy.

THE INAUGURATION of Kim Dae Jung as president of South Korea is the most exciting democratic transition since Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president of South Africa in 1994. The two have much in common, not least the almost impossibly high expectations greeting them.Each was a lifelong crusader against tyranny who spent time in prison. Mr. Kim still limps from a botched government-ordered assassination attempt. Each came to power from the opposition in a democratic election, long past retirement age. Mr. Kim is 74, a year younger than Mr. Mandela was in 1994.

WASHINGTON -- Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev provided President Bush yesterday with an advance look at the economic reform program he plans to unveil at the London summit next week, and initial reactions from U.S. officials were positive.Neither Mr. Bush nor his top advisers got a chance to review the 23-page document in detail yesterday, but administration officials say preliminary indications are that Mr. Gorbachev will bring to London a blueprint for a speedier move toward a free-market system than he has advocated in the past.

POLITICAL stability was achieved but the economic crisis ignored when Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chose Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi as its chief. He will be elected prime minister by the lower house of parliament tomorrow.Mr. Obuchi, who has been foreign minister for a year but has no major economic experience, won because he is the boss of the biggest faction of the party.That's how things have always been done by the LDP, which has learned nothing during the current crisis.

MOSCOW -- Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, moving boldly to implement his promised program of radical economic reforms, assumed control of key elements of the Soviet Union's financial system over the weekend.Asserting the right of the Russian Federation to control its economy, Mr. Yeltsin ordered the republic's Finance Ministry to assume the duties of the Soviet Finance Ministry, including the issuance of money and custody of the country's gold reserves. In a renewed effort to force the breakup of the central government's bloated bureaucracy, he also decreed a halt of Russian payments, as of Wednesday, to all federal agencies except those, such as the Defense and Foreign Affairs ministries, to whose continuation he has agreed.

MOSCOW -- With the harsh fact of price rises sinking in across the nation, the speaker of the Russian parliament called yesterday for the resignation of the government of President Boris N. Yeltsin for having enacted "uncontrolled, anarchic" economic reforms.The call by the speaker, Ruslan Khasbulatov, was rejected quickly by a spokesman for the Russian government, who also denied that Mr. Yeltsin might resign his second job as prime minister in reaction to the growing political unrest over price rises.

MOSCOW -- An outspoken economic reformer reportedly has left the Russian government, removing one of the last strong voices for free-market reform in the team being put together by Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov.The future of the official, Boris Fyodorov, a former finance minister who returned to the government in the spring to spearhead an aggressive tax collection drive, has been closely watched here and abroad as a sign of whether the Primakov government will represent a range of economic viewpoints or will tilt heavily toward policies favored by the Communists.

THE THIRD TIME that President Suharto promised the International Monetary Fund to make economic reforms, he may have meant it.Twice before, Indonesia's elderly dictator agreed to close insolvent banks and end cartels and monopolies enjoyed by his family, if the IMF and rich countries would lend money to cover $74 billion in private-sector international debts.Twice he reneged, made his government more crony-infested and pushed his daughter Siti Hardijanti Rukmana (better known as Tutut) forward as heir apparent.