World

Yeltsin's Comeback Fizzles

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 8, 1999 / 4:10 PM EST / CBS

New questions hung over Russian President Boris Yeltsin's ability to stage a comeback following another apparent health emergency on Tuesday after his risky decision to fly to Jordan for King Hussein's funeral backfired.

Doctors advised the 68-year-old president not to make the exhausting day trip barely a week after he left a hospital where he was treated for a bleeding stomach ulcer.

Russian commentators said he had travelled to Jordan to try to show he can still carry out at least ceremonial duties and to steal the limelight from rapidly rising Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, whose stature is growing at Yeltsin's expense.

But television pictures beamed across the world from Jordan showed Yeltsin being supported by his wife Naina and then Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Pale and tired, he returned to Moscow after a few hours without even seeing the king's grave.

Newspapers lampooned Yeltsin's efforts to reassert his authority and tackle Russia's economic crisis after weeks on the political sidelines with the ulcer and, before that, pneumonia.

"Yeltsin did not make it to the grave but was very close to it," the popular Moskovsky Komsomolets declared.

His performance drew criticism from politicians ranging from Communist firebrand Gennady Zyuganov to liberal Vladimir Lukin.

"The president was not on particularly good form. We all saw that," Lukin told Ekho Moskvy radio. "If Russia is really the most important thing to him as president, he should have allowed himself to recover fully and not gone to this ceremony."

Zyuganov seized on the latest sign of weakness to call again for constitutional changes to dilute vast presidential powers.

"We believe a document should be prepared that would restrict the arbitrariness of a single helpless, weak-willed... person who is sitting in the Kremlin, or lying in a hospital bed, or staying at a sanitarium. Since the middle of 1995 he has not worked for a single full week," Zyuganov said on Monday.

The trip to Jordan seemed intended to dispel any impression that Yeltsin is not fit to rule, thus making changes to the 1993 constitution unnecessary. It was molded to suit his desire for more power over parliament -- the opposition's stronghold.

The other reason, analysts said, was to show Primakov, an Arabist who knew King Hussein, that Yeltsin remains a force to reckon with. On both scores, Yeltsin had little obvious success.

Primakov has taken charge of everyday affairs in Russia and has urged Yeltsin, for the sake of stability, to agree not to disband parliament or sack the cabinet, in exchange for parliament agreeing not to try to topple the government.

Sergei Mironov, Yeltsin's chief doctor, said on Tuesday the president was "fine." Kremlin officials denied a report citing unnamed Jordanian officials that he had needed medical attention while in Jordan.