He is said to have settled on Vladimir A. Ivashko, the centrist leader of the Communist Party in the Ukraine, the second largest Soviet republic.

Wilson was a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a coalition of centrist Republican leaders.

Whatever the solution, a nation ruled for decades by a gentlemanly if erratic consensus of mostly centrist leaders seemed headed for a period of deep divisions.

In the past, for instance, items for liberal and progressive Democrats were cut by the party's centrist leaders.

The disclosures were hugely embarrassing to centrist Arab leaders like the King who have been backing Iraq, fearing the threat of an Islamic upheaval.

Sept. 24 The Congress votes for simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections by March 1994, and this idea begins to gain support among centrist and regional leaders.

Mr. Iliescu is 70, and most centrist leaders are seen as dry technocrats.

But let a real enemy appear - a radical enemy who seriously threatens this nation's future - and our centrist leaders discover the pressing need to spend more time with their families.

"We have no illusions about the Socialists," insisted a centrist leader, "and we don't want to become just their satellites."