UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday. February 15, 1996
7A
Yeltsin to try for second term
The Associated Press
YEKATERINBURG, Russia President Boris Yeltsin came home yesterday to announce his political plans in a frigid, industrial city that says it knows him well — but
"He did a very good job here, and his wife used to stand right next to us in line for shoes," said Zoya Kartashova, a tiny pensioner in
believes he has lost touch with its troubles.
Boris Yeltsin
fur boots and a thin purple jacket who was walking home on a crisp cold day.
"Now I actually feel sorry for him
He's alone there and doesn't know how life really is for people. I voted for him last time, but that's it."
Yeltsin, 65, is expected to announce today that he will seek a second presidential term. He trails in nationwide opinion polls and appears to fare only slightly better in his own backyard.
"It's a difficult decision," Yeltsin told reporters at Yekaterinburg's airport, referring to the decision whether to run in the June 16 election.
"It would not mean that I will necessarily be elected," he said. "But we must continue with reforms. We don't have any other choice. There is no road back, and we must finish what we have started."
Russia's provinces have been the last to feel benefits of market reforms, and voters there flocked to the Communists and other opposition parties in December's parliamentary elections.
Yeltsin's trip to Yekaterinburg (yeh-kah-teh-REEN-burg), a city of 2 million people, is the first of what his office said would be many visits to Russia's regions.
The Ural Mountains city, formerly known as Sverdlovsk, was at the heart of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. It is alling now as Russian industry declines and the military shrinks.
At Sreduralstrol, a huge construction company that Yeltsin ran before going into politics, the past seven years have been rough. The number of projects is down by one-third, said deputy director Konstantin Yellsevev.
Yellseey, who worked with Yeltis, said he sympathized with the job the president faced in rebuilding an entire economy for
150 million people.
Parking in the rear
Besides the economy, Yeltsin is widely condemned for the bloody war in Chechnya and the 1983 battle at Russia's parliament, when Yeltsin called in tanks to put down an armed opposition rebellion.
The strongest point in Yeltsin's favor seems to be the perceived lack of other viable, moderate or reformist candidates.
"I would vote for him (Yeltsin) so there could be some calm. Otherwise, things will be shaken up all over again," said Yuri Bezrukov, 56, one of a crew clearing a street already lined by waist-high piles of snow.
Kartashova, the pensioner, said she was too fed up to vote at all. She said she had no use for the Communists because her grandmother and uncle were killed in Soviet purges and their property confiscated.
Dead cats, fake bombs sell films
BONN, Germany — After German men in Ku Klux Klan robes burned a cross in a 1994 TV documentary, investigators went hunting for what they thought was a local chapter of the white-robed racists.
After digging further, prosecutors found that Born had concocted and sold at least 22 documentaries to German television from 1991 until his arrest in December.
The Associated Press
Instead, they uncovered a vast hoax. They say Michael Born, one of Germany's most prolific freelance documentary producers, had some pals dress up like Klansmen because he knew the story would sell.
In one, Born paid an actor to stalk and kill a domestic cat. In another, he hired Albanians to pose as Kurdish fighters. Born interviewed friends and said they were Austrian terrorists. He staged an attack on a supposed Somali village.
Investigators say he sold bogus documentaries to at least three cable TV networks and made at least $204,000. He was arrested Dec. 12 for investigation of fraud, a charge that could bring up to 15 years in prison.
Prosecutor Norbert Weise said Born usually had chosen topics that had elements of truth, then had created his own scenarios so the stories would be more compelling.
"He mixed fiction with reality in his films," Weise said.
It's one of the biggest scandals to hit the German media since 1983, when Stern magazine published excerpts of what turned out to be forged diaries of Adolf Hitler.
Born claimed he was encouraged to fake documentaries by an official at one of the networks and suggested that there are many others who are selling doctored news as they compete for ratings.
Guenther Jauck, host of the RTL cable television program that showed many of Born-sien
Jauck's show and other programs that bought Born's work have filed criminal complaints against the producer for fraud.
In a documentary broadcast on April 26, Born graphically illustrated a new quarry for German hunters — stray cats. Viewers saw a man with a rifle stalking a cat in a wooded area, taking aim and shooting it dead.
segments, insisted he did not know that the videotapes had been fabricated.
According to Weise, the rifle belonged to Born, the cat was from an animal shelter, and the hunter was playing to the camera.
Another Born documentary showed a supposed camp in Turkey of the Kurdish Workers' Party, which has been fighting for an independent homeland. Bearded men of the camp were building a bomb.
Prosecuters say the bomb never was built, and the men weren't even Kurds, let alone guerrillas — they were Albanian actors. And the filming was done in Greece, not Turkey.
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