World

Yeltsin Released From Hospital

October 11, 1999 / 8:49 AM EDT / AP

Russian President Boris Yeltsin was released from the hospital Monday after his temperature returned to normal, and he went back to his country residence, the Kremlin said.

Yeltsin was taken to the Central Clinical Hospital on Saturday suffering from a high temperature and a flu. Shortly after he was admitted, his temperature began to normalize, the presidential press service said.

Doctors said Yeltsin's condition had improved and he could finish recovering at home, presidential spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin told the Interfax news agency.

Yeltsin did not give any special powers to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin while he was in the hospital, Interfax said, indicating that the latest illness was not serious. Yakushkin had described it as Â"minor.Â"

Â"The president has a normal temperature, doctors are of the opinion that he should finish treatment in household conditions,Â" Yakushkin said Monday.

Russian television briefly showed a smiling Yeltsin chatting with Yakushkin upon leaving the hospital Monday. The president, moving slowly but looking healthy, waved to cameras and then got into his limousine unaided.

Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko said Monday that Yeltsin had a Â"normal, banal cold,Â" according to Interfax. He said that the hospitalization had nothing to do with Yeltsin's heart, which was operated on in 1996.

With Yeltsin's history of health problems, the latest trip to the hospital once again led to questions about the president's fitness to lead. The illness comes at a time when Russian forces have launched a major military campaign against breakaway Chechnya in southern Russia.

Yeltsin, 68, has been hospitalized for an ulcer, pneumonia, bronchitis and heart trouble during his second term. Still, he insists he is capable of running Russia and says he won't step down before his term runs out next summer.

Even when healthy, Yeltsin rarely spends more than a few days a week in the Kremlin, and usually returns to his home outside Moscow by early afternoon.

He has had little to say about the conflict in Chechnya or the financial scandals swirling around his administration.