Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9310030124
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
Two dozen police officers were injured - two seriously, officials said. They said several protesters also were hurt - several seriously. Hard-line Yeltsin opponents put the number of injured demonstrators at more than 60.
For the first time, well-organized demonstrators forced police to retreat. Officers fired pistols in the air and used sticks against demonstrators, some of whom carried pipes.
About three blocks away, lawmakers inside the parliament building refused to surrender their weapons, demanded to be put on national television and complained that Yeltsin had turned the building, or White House, into a "gulag camp."
A confident Yeltsin, however, predicted the lawmakers would soon back down and take steps toward ending the standoff, which began Sept. 21 when he disbanded parliament.
"I think that common sense must prevail, and there should be an agreement today on the surrender of weapons," Yeltsin said after stopping his motorcade at the White House on the way to work at the Kremlin.
Yeltsin gave a brief pep talk to some of the thousands of riot police who have stood for days in cold and rain around the building.
Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, named acting president by parliament, also spoke to the officers, but from the White House side of the barricades and razor wire.
The leather-jacketed Rutskoi faced a line of helmeted troops holding silver riot shields and urged them to join him. Rutskoi was surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards.
At one point, he was drowned out by blasts from someone reading a Yeltsin decree on a speaker atop an armored vehicle. The speaker also occasionally blared rock music.
After midnight, negotiators from both sides signed an agreement calling for full-scale talks among working groups later today about how to ease the tension, the Interfax news agency reported.
Constitutional Court member Vladimir Opeinik, who participated in the talks, said he hoped the agreement would lead to an end to the standoff, although details have yet to be worked out, Interfax said.
The agreement was reached during church-mediated talks at the home of Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
by CNB