December 14, 1993

If his party had not won almost a quarter of the vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday, Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky could well be dismissed as a crude parody of a primitive right-winger, fired by self-pity and primitive nationalism, quick to blame foreigners, intellectuals or unappreciative betters for all his failures, certain of his cause. His posters show the 47-year-old lawyer wearing a badly knotted tie and a puffy scowl over slogans like, "I'll raise Russia from her knees," or "I'll not allow anyone to offend Russians."

The Loral Corporation, a weapons contractor that has prospered even as the Government has cut military spending, said yesterday that it would pay $1.58 billion for I.B.M.'s Federal Systems Company, whose products include software for radar-warning systems, antisubmarine warfare, satellites and air-traffic control. The deal, to close on Jan. 1, effectively takes the International Business Machines Corporation out of the weapons business, although it will continue to sell other computer software and hardware to Government agencies.

As recently as three years ago, American military officers in El Salvador trained a group of wealthy Salvadorans associated with right-wing death squads, State Department documents show. The training occurred as the threat of Communism was receding and the Bush Administration was pursuing peace settlements in Central America.

As a closely watched target date came and went with no change in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin suggested today that there could be still further delays in withdrawing Israel's soldiers and introducing Palestinian self-rule. "No dates are sacred," he said.

Volvo may have built its reputation on solid reliability and a concern for safety, but its shareholders are enduring an uncharacteristically hair-raising ride. The messy collapse earlier this month of the Swedish company's plan to merge car- and truck-building operations with those of Renault, which is owned by the French Government, has left Volvo without a chairman or a functioning board, and without a strategy or enough long-term financing for the next few crucial years.