Yeltsin Still Too Sick to Work or to Host Planned Summit

MOSCOW — Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin will not be coming back to the Kremlin soon despite his “burning desire” to return to work after his bout with double pneumonia, his spokesman said Friday.

Nor will the 65-year-old Russian leader, in constant poor health since being reelected last July, be hosting a planned summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States on Wednesday. Presidents from four of the former Soviet republics in the alliance asked him to put off the talks, and Yeltsin agreed, the Commonwealth secretariat reported.

“The president’s state of health is not so good as to expect an immediate, hurried return to the Kremlin,” spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky said. “It seems to me that the president has not so far fully recovered from a very serious ailment, double pneumonia.”

Yastrzhembsky insisted that the president will keep to a schedule of diplomatic dates in the next few weeks, including a meeting at The Hague with European Union officials Feb. 4-5.

But Commonwealth Executive Secretary Ivan Korotchenya said Yeltsin had agreed by telephone to the request to delay his next scheduled public outing, the Commonwealth summit.

Since winning a second term last summer, Yeltsin has spent only a few days at work in the Kremlin, shuttling instead between hospitals and quiet country houses. Yeltsin’s bout with pneumonia this month followed a quintuple heart bypass operation in November.

Since the Russian leader was last seen in public Jan. 6, there has been no photographic or filmed evidence of him holding any of the working meetings with government officials and aides that Yastrzhembsky has reported--fueling public suspicion that the president is now too unwell even to pose for pictures.

“There are no instructions requiring filming or taking photos every time the president has a protocol meeting,” Yastrzhembsky said.

A recent poll published by ISM-Research Center in Moscow indicated that 70% of respondents believed that Yeltsin will not be able to do his job well again, and 69% did not believe that they are getting full, reliable information about his health.

The lower chamber of parliament, the Duma, made an unsuccessful attempt Wednesday to muster enough votes to order Yeltsin out of power. The Duma has no legal right to remove the president, but the attempt was a sign of the degree of public skepticism about the president’s political future. Late Friday, Duma deputies backed off from a threat to stall approval of Russia’s 1997 budget in a new attempt to drive Yeltsin from power.