December 25, 1991

Driven out by political rejection and the plummeting economy, Mikhail S. Gorbachev plans to announce his resignation as President of the defunct Soviet Union on Wednesday in a television address to the nation, his office said today. Immediately after, the launching codes for the Soviet nuclear arsenal are to be handed over to President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, according to the transition plan for shifting Soviet power to the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

Haiti, racked by violence and strangled by an international embargo, is paying dearly for the military coup that turned it away from democracy, in the view of many Haitians and foreigners involved in the country. Contemplating a landscape that now includes thousands of poor Haitians risking their lives on overcrowded boats to flee repression and hardship, the death of a once-lively press and an economy largely deprived of gasoline and electrical power, even some of those who supported the overthrow of the country's first elected President on Sept. 30 now call for his return. Reports of Progress Travelers arriving at the international airport, like drivers who stop at street corners, find themselves quickly surrounded by people with outstretched hands, begging for food or money, in numbers not previously seen there.

Hemophilia and AIDS Hemophiliacs, whose repeated use of blood products has left them devastated by AIDS, are demanding Government help. Page 7. Burmese Unrest Is Widening The military junta in Myanmar, formerly Burma, is reinforcing troops to counter widening civil unrest. Page 3. Gov. Wilder's Record Like the fiscal conservative he professes to be, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder is running for President on his record of cutting the Virginia budget. Page 8. Why a Jails Chief Fell Allyn R. Sielaff ran prison systems in four states and built an impressive record. Then he came to New York City. Page 33.

In the four days since he announced that he would not run for President, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo seems to have sharpened the vitriol he directs at the Republicans who control the New York State Senate, whom he depicted as forcing him to renounce a presidential candidacy because they would not agree with him on a solution to state's budget woes. The Governor has stepped up warnings that he will use his veto power to be a player over the coming months in state lawmakers' reapportionment of both their own districts and those of the New York Congressional delegation.

Because of holiday production requirements, The Times is printed today in two sections. The Living Section begins on page 25, Business Day on page 47; Health is on page 39.