Lebed is main butt of Moscow's post election infighting

THE DUST has hardly settled following Russia's presidential election campaign, but the political infighting has begun with the new security chief, Gen Alexander Lebed, as the main target.

A man whom Gen Lebed had suggested as a possible defence minister has been accused in the Duma of complicity in large scale corruption and the security chief himself has come under attack from the former privatisation minister, Mr Anatoly Chubais.

While the defeated Communists have been quite calm they even sent a telegram of congratulations to President Yell sin on his victory the real action has been taking place among Mr Yeltsin's fractious supporters.

The Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, has expressed wariness of Gen Lebed's demands for extra powers and yesterday in the Duma it was a member of Mr Chernomyrdin's "Our Home is Russia" party who dropped the first bombshell of the post election period.

The attack, by the chairman of the Duma's defence committee, Gen Lev Rokhlin, began with a denunciation in highly colourful language of the sacked defence minister, Gen Pavel Grachev. He was, Gen Rokhlin said, an "utterly corrupt" man who had "lick spittles and thieves swarming around him". Gen Rokhlin, who commanded Russian forces in the capture of the Chechen Presidential Palace in Grozny last year, said Gen Grachev had been involved in "massive criminal embezzlements in the armed forces" and named three other generals as accomplices.

One of them, Gen Konstantin Kobets, who is on Gen Lebed's short list for the defence ministry, "vigorously defended" the actions of the "Lyukon" company, which was given a contract to build military apartment blocks but had not built any.

Gen Kobets, as inspector general of the defence ministry, had a duty to safeguard the interests of the army but did not do so "because his son was a co-founder of the company," Gen Rokhlin said.

He also accused the former military budget chief, Gen Vasily Vorobyov, of transferring $23 million from munitions sales to Bulgaria to a German bank. The money, he claimed, later disappeared. Gen Grachev's brother in law, Gen Dmitry Kharchenko, sacked following the first round of the elections, was accused of illegally changing $5 million into roubles and transferring them into a military insurance company at seven per cent interest.

In a separate development, the former privatisation minister, Mr Chubais who played a major part in Mr Yeltsin's re-election campaign said that giving Gen Lebed the responsibilities he had asked for in the economic field would be "a very grave mistake".

Mr Yeltsin himself, although back at work in the Kremlin after his mysterious disappearance in the final week of the election campaign, stayed out of the controversy.

In its official report on the elections, the OSCE observer team yesterday said the voting procedures in the election had been free and fair and reflected the will of the Russian people, but that media bias and irregular funding methods had been used by the Yeltsin side.