"Obscure" Sergei’s task ahead: Keeping Russian Govt well oiled

MOSCOW, March 24: The man named acting prime minister of Russia yesterday was perhaps the least known member of President Boris Yeltsin's Ca...

MOSCOW, March 24: The man named acting prime minister of Russia yesterday was perhaps the least known member of President Boris Yeltsin’s Cabinet before his sudden elevation.

Less than a year ago, Sergei Kirienko was a relatively obscure oilman in Russia’s third-largest city, Nizhny Novgorod. Brought into the Government last July, he was serving as fuel and energy minister before his unexpected appointment as acting premier thrust him into the public eye.

Yeltsin’s spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told a TV interviewer last evening that the President was likely to nominate Kirienko to the top Government office permanently. Yeltsin has two weeks to present his candidate for prime minister for confirmation by the state Duma, the lower House of Parliament.

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Yastrzhembsky called Kirienko “the most likely, strong and possible candidate” for the post.

Kirienko himself wouldn’t comment on whether Yeltsin planned to nominate him, but told reporters he’d been asked to draw up a list of candidates for theCabinet.

He told a news conference that his appointment was “a surprise for many, primarily for myself,” according to the Itar-Tass News Agency. He spent only 20 minutes talking to reporters, explaining that he was needed at home. “It is my daughter’s birthday and I promised her I’d come home early,” Itar-Tass quoted him as saying.

Kirienko, 35, is a political protege of first deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, a young reformer who was Governor of Nizhny Novgorod before his appointment to the Cabinet last March. In July, Nemtsov who held the fuel and energy portfolio at the time, recruited Kirienko to Moscow to be his deputy. In November, Nemtsov relinquished his position as energy minister and Kirienko was appointed in his place. Nemtsov said he’d known Kirienko for nearly 15 years. “He is a very capable, organised, absolutely competent and very energetic person and one who is open for compromise,” Itar-Tass quoted Nemtsov as saying.