From "Old Guard" to Foreign Minister

MOSCOW: Russian President Boris Yeltsin named Yevgeny Primakov, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs and head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, as the country's new foreign minister. In contrast to Andrei Kozyrev, ousted amidst charges from parliament of being too soft toward the West, Primakov is expected to turn the focus of Russia's foreign policy toward the Middle East and the former Soviet republics. "It's clear that Yeltsin wanted to find a successor who would not appear to be pro-Western," says Moscow bureau chief John Kohan. "Since Zhirinovsky and his supporters have put the nationalist agenda on the map, Yeltsin has made a real effort to look like a Russian patriot. He wants to position himself more toward the center, while not completely embracing the nationalist agenda." A longtime Communist Party member, the 66 year old Primakov was named to head the foreign arm of the reorganized KGB in 1991. "The interesting thing about Primakov," adds Kohan, "is that he was a Gorbachev man. He came up through the party ranks under Gorbachev, and he's one of few old-guard people still around."