Parliament Building

Both sides in Russia's political crisis rejected compromise yesterday, with President Boris N. Yeltsin vowing that talks cannot begin until the cache of arms in the White House is removed, and parliamentary leaders insisting they will retain the weapons until some of their conditions are met. Only a few armed guards were patrolling yesterday inside the White House, or parliament building. On the first floor, though, about a dozen men were going through military-style drills, holding curtain rods instead of rifles.

President Boris N. Yeltsin's government yesterday issued an ultimatum to barricaded legislators, ordering them to leave the parliament building by Monday or face "serious consequences. " Government officials, though, repeated their pledge not to attack the building with firearms and did not say how they intended to enforce the order. Freezing rain and sleet yesterday reduced the number of parliament supporters around the building, as the nation's political crisis entered its ninth day. A few incidents with police were reported.

They scaled the green dome of the parliament building, waving giant red-and-white Indonesian flags from the roof and stringing a banner that said "Total Reform for the People. " They parked themselves on steps. They took over hallways and encamped in breezeways, ready to spend the night. They even sneaked into an air-conditioned auditorium, lounging with their feet up on the arms of soft-cushioned chairs. In an extraordinary day of protest, more than 15,000 Indonesian students took over the parliament building yesterday and gave President Suharto a crash course in people power.

President Zviad Gamsakhurdia fled Georgia's parliament building with loyalist troops and family members before dawn today after a two-week siege by opposition fighters. The president was reported heading for western Georgia. The group, whose numbers were not known, left at 3:30 a.m. Gamsakhurdia, accused by rebel leaders of acting like a dictator since becoming the former Soviet republic's first popularly elected president in May, had been holed up in Government House since fighting broke out Dec. 22. There was no immediate sign of widespread fighting in the capital this morning, but fire broke out in the parliament building about 6 hours after Gamsakhurdia's departure and engulfed the building.

President Boris Yeltsin kept hundreds of troops in Moscow today and tightened the throttle on political opponents two days after crushing armed resistance to his rule. In a sign of determination to follow through vigorously after Monday's assault on the White House parliament building, Yeltsin fired the prosecutor general and rounded up opponents in Moscow. But he also announced he was lifting censorship imposed on Moscow newspapers, saying it had not been envisaged in his state of emergency decree last Sunday.

CAIRO - Soldiers stormed an anti-military protest camp outside Egypt's Cabinet building Friday, beating women with sticks and hurling chunks of concrete and glass onto protesters from the roof of the parliament in a resurgence of turmoil only a day after millions voted in parliamentary elections. At least seven protesters were shot to death in the clashes, including a prominent Muslim cleric, activists said. The heavy-handed assault was apparently an attempt to clear out protesters who have been camped out in front of the building for three weeks demanding the ruling military leave power.

A group of Muslim militants said yesterday that they had toppled the government of Trinidad and Tobago and had captured the Parliament building and the prime minister. The Caribbean News Agency said at least three people were killed when armed young men burst into Parliament firing their guns while the chamber was in session, but there was no confirmation of that report. The news agency quoted witnesses as saying that the bodyguards of Prime Minister Arthur Robinson were jostled out of the Parliament building in their underwear.

As a group of Philadelphia musicians made their way yesterday to a hall at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, their host, Professor Svetlana Siguidi, told them three people had been killed hours earlier only a few blocks from the music school. "This is not a good walking day," she warned. Throughout the early morning hours, the musicians had heard sporadic bursts of gunfire. Mikhail Saponov, a music-history professor, a told them that pro-parliament snipers were seen on the conservatory roof during the night.

Right-wing forces threatened last night to crush pro-independence governments in Latvia and Lithuania as both sides girded for what many fear may be the final showdown. Here in the Lithuanian capital - where 14 unarmed people were killed Sunday when Soviet soldiers stormed a television tower - workers spent the day digging a deep anti-tank trench, erecting steel tank traps and blocking the main entrances to parliament with enormous concrete blocks. Lithuanian officials said they feared an imminent tank and helicopter assault on the glass-and-steel parliament building, defended only by lightly armed national guardsmen, police and volunteers.

Gennady Yanayev, 73, a leader of the abortive 1991 Soviet coup who briefly declared himself president replacing Mikhail Gorbachev, has died, Russia's Communist Party announced Friday. In one of the indelible images of the putsch that hastened the Soviet Union's collapse, Mr. Yanayev's hands shook visibly as he announced he was taking over. He was later quoted as saying he was drunk when he signed the decree elevating himself from the vice presidency. A party statement said Mr. Yanayev died Friday after an unspecified lengthy illness.

We never thought much about what would happen to us in case of a natural or human-caused disaster. But after an unnerving experience in Morocco, we started rethinking our travel-safety checklist: Have we packed the first-aid kit? Are the meds past their pull dates? Do we have the sunscreen? That May trip to Morocco and a tip from a travel nurse caused us to add "let the feds know where you'll be" to our checklist. Most days during our two-week stay in Morocco's capital city of Rabat, we walked past the Parliament building to get to the train station.

CAIRO - Egypt's military rulers suffered a major embarrassment on Friday when a new civilian advisory council designed to bolster their legitimacy suspended its operations in protest over the military's deadly but ineffective treatment of peaceful demonstrators. The advisory council's decision followed a renewed outbreak of violence both in the center of Cairo on Friday and at vote-counting centers around the country the previous night. Election monitors said the violence threatened to undermine the credibility of Egypt's first parliamentary election since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak 10 months ago. The clashes at the vote-counting centers began after polls closed late Thursday, when soldiers beat up judges and other civilians trying to enter the centers.

CAIRO - Soldiers stormed an anti-military protest camp outside Egypt's Cabinet building Friday, beating women with sticks and hurling chunks of concrete and glass onto protesters from the roof of the parliament in a resurgence of turmoil only a day after millions voted in parliamentary elections. At least seven protesters were shot to death in the clashes, including a prominent Muslim cleric, activists said. The heavy-handed assault was apparently an attempt to clear out protesters who have been camped out in front of the building for three weeks demanding the ruling military leave power.

Gennady Yanayev, 73, a leader of the abortive 1991 Soviet coup who briefly declared himself president replacing Mikhail Gorbachev, has died, Russia's Communist Party announced Friday. In one of the indelible images of the putsch that hastened the Soviet Union's collapse, Mr. Yanayev's hands shook visibly as he announced he was taking over. He was later quoted as saying he was drunk when he signed the decree elevating himself from the vice presidency. A party statement said Mr. Yanayev died Friday after an unspecified lengthy illness.

Henry Nuzum and Aquil Abdullah won the first final in the men's double sculls yesterday on Lake Mercer in West Windsor, N.J., and need only one more victory in the two-of-three format to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team. The duo, representing the U.S. Navy and Princeton Training Center, won in 6 minutes, 21.68 seconds. Finishing 1.21 seconds later were Ken Jurkowski and Adam Holland, a Philadelphia resident. They represented the Harvard University Boat Club. Michael Callahan and Dave Friedericks of MLARC were third, with Jonathan Burns of Philadelphia's Vesper Boat Club and Todd Beyreuther of the Pocock Rowing Center fourth.

My wife, our two children and I live in the center of Belgrade. It's a very pleasant part of town, and convenient too - except when NATO is waging an air war. Now we worry. Will a nearby target be hit so hard that our apartment building collapses from the blast? Will a cruise missile or bomb miss its target and hit us? Might some military planner or commander decide, in spite of all the assurances, to attack civilians? Ever since the early 1990s, when Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Macedonia seceded from Yugoslavia, the Federation has consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro.

They scaled the green dome of the parliament building, waving giant red-and-white Indonesian flags from the roof and stringing a banner that said "Total Reform for the People. " They parked themselves on steps. They took over hallways and encamped in breezeways, ready to spend the night. They even sneaked into an air-conditioned auditorium, lounging with their feet up on the arms of soft-cushioned chairs. In an extraordinary day of protest, more than 15,000 Indonesian students took over the parliament building yesterday and gave President Suharto a crash course in people power.

Russia's parliament made good yesterday on its threat to reject President Boris N. Yeltsin's nominee for prime minister. Yeltsin, in turn, made good on his threat to force the legislators to reconsider their judgment. Within an hour of the expected defeat in the Duma, Yeltsin renominated Sergei V. Kiriyenko, the little-known 35-year-old former energy minister who became acting prime minister after Yeltsin dismissed his entire government last month. Parliament will again consider confirming Kiriyenko for the permanent job next Friday.

Russia's new parliament, unruly and leaderless, met for the first time yesterday, and early procedural votes suggested that neither the reformers nor their communist and nationalist opponents would easily control the legislature. Although the nation's first freely elected legislature since the early days of the Bolsheviks appeared close to chaos several times, the Duma, or lower house of the new Federal Assembly, ended the first day with two compromises forced by democrats who had feared they might be relegated to being a permanent, frustrated opposition.

I do not claim clairvoyant powers. I don't even have 20/20 hindsight. I must tell you, however, that I knew that the siege of the Russian parliament in Moscow was going to go wrong - bad wrong. I knew it as soon as the Yeltsin people started blasting the miscreants inside the parliament building with thunderous rock and rap music. I don't know who first had the idea of trying to break the spirit of an encircled foe by playing loud, obnoxious music at him - I suspect it was a burned-out CIA psychologist whose adolescent son was organizing a rock band and rehearsing in the basement of his home - but it is truly, truly dumb.