UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT SEEKS END TO TRADE WAR WITH RUSSIA. Leonid Kuchma says he hopes his meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow on 16-17 November will allow the two countries to put aside their "economic war," ITAR-TASS reported on 12 November. Kuchma also said he hopes that the two countries will be able to ratify the Treaty of Friendship that he and Yeltsin concluded earlier. In another indication that economic ties between the two countries may be improving, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Anatolii Chubais will visit Kyiv on the eve of the KuchmaYeltsin summit to seek a settlement of bilateral debts outstanding from the Soviet era. But the Ukrainian government's economic problems at home continue to mount. The parliament on 12 November gave a chilly reception to a modified 1998 state budget. PG