[PEN-L:396] Russian Miners' Railway Blockade

[Gregory Schwartz <grishas@xxxxxxxx>]

Kiriyenko Vows to Lift Miners' Railway Blockade

 MOSCOW -- (Agence France Presse, Reuters) Russian Prime Minister Sergei
Kiriyenko (pictured) vowed Friday to reopen train tracks blocked by
striking miners demanding back pay, Interfax news agency reported.

"The government will reinstate order," Kiriyenko told a meeting at the
Transportation Ministry. "There are laws and they will be applied," he
said.

Kiriyenko stressed that the railroads are crucial to the nation's
economic health, "and that is precisely why they have been targeted for
the protests," he said.

Meanwhile, miners protesting against unpaid wages on Friday kept up
their blockade of a power station on the Pacific island of Sakhalin,
triggering further power cuts amid a tense standoff with police.

The authorities have threatened to use force to clear the protesters.

The miners on Sakhalin have been preventing deliveries of fuel by rail
to the island's main power station for more than a week.

Yury Kuzin, a spokesman for local power company Sakhalinenergo, said
power cuts were now lasting up to 12 hours a day and were affecting
hospitals and other vital services. They also risked shutting the
island's fish processing industry.

He told Reuters by telephone from the island's capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
that around 150 miners were blocking the railway. About 80 policemen,
including OMON riot police, were also at the scene.

The miners have allowed some fuel to pass through to avoid forcing the
plant to close completely but Kuzin said Sakhalin faced a permanent
electricity blackout if the blockade dragged on much longer.

Local prosecutors have launched an investigation of the blockade.

"We cannot exclude the possibility that the authorities will resort to
stronger measures to relieve the situation in the near future," Kuzin
said.

Local official Alexei Bayandin told Reuters the authorities had begun
negotiations with miners' leaders.

He also said Sakhalin Governor Igor Farkhutdinov had held talks in
Moscow with Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov on the situation.

The miners are demanding wage arrears totaling 100 million rubles ($16
million) but Bayandin said neither the federal government nor the local
authorities were likely to come up with all the money.

Miners at Europe's biggest coal mine, at Vorgashorskaya in Russia, have
taken a director hostage to demand immediate payment of their back
wages, the Itar-Tass news agency said Thursday. The miners, at the pit
near Vorkuta in the north of Russia, have not been paid for 10 months
and have halted all mining operations since July 6.

Further west in the Ural city of Chelyabinsk, miners have threatened to
shut down the entire Trans-Siberian railway if their back wages are not
paid.

They have been blocking rail links to the Mayak nuclear processing
facility, a strategic plant that processes dangerous nuclear materials.

Russian firms lost millions of dollars in May when miners blockaded the
railway for two weeks.

$1=6.206 Ruble ( (c) 1998 Agence France Presse, Reuters)

--
Gregory Schwartz
Department of Political Science
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3
Canada

Tel: (416) 736-5265
Fax: (416) 736-5686
Web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci