Heart scare puts Yeltsin on the brink

Russian leader 'still in charge' but political future now in doubt

The political future of Boris Yeltsin was hanging in the balance last night after the 64-year-old President was rushed by helicopter from his country home to a Moscow hospital following another heart attack.

Although said to be mild, it was his second in less than four months and casts doubt over whether he will be able to run for a second term in the Kremlin in next June's presidential elections.

Aides to the President, whose health has deteriorated in four-and-a- half years in office, said he remains in command. But his condition was sufficiently serious for his staff to postpone a trip to China early next month.

The Kremlin is awaiting a final diagnosis on his illness, expected today, before deciding whether he will still host next Tuesday's summit with the presidents of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. One official said there was "not much cause for great optimism" he would return to work in the next few days.

Mr Yeltsin's aides blamed the stress of this week's summit in the US, where Mr Yeltsin appeared in high spirits, but made little headway with the problem of the threatened expansion of Nato. His affliction was "linked to the intellectual, moral and physical stresses" of the trip, said Viktor Ilyushin, a member of the Kremlin inner circle.

In fact, Mr Yeltsin has been under pressure on other fronts. His government has been split over the war in Chechnya which grinds on despite a peace accord. He faces an electorate disillusioned with market reforms, and expected to show their displeasure in December's parliamentary elections.

Last night the Kremlin stressed Mr Yeltsin was not in any danger. "There is no question of replacing Yeltsin," said a Kremlin spokesman, Igor Ignatyev. The Defence Minister, Pavel Grachev, said the Russian leader was "feeling fine".

But Mr Yeltsin's health problems, which have dogged him throughout his term in office along with allegations of heavy drinking, will renew doubts over how long he can rule the world's largest country. If he is out of action for long, it will have an unsettling effect before parliamentary elections in which the the Communist Party is leading the polls.

The Russian leader has not been seen in public since his return from his four-day trip to France and the US on Tuesday. An aide said that he was supposed to have been resting, but had "worked hard with papers". Yesterday he was to have appeared at a religious procession in Moscow's Red Square, but cancelled after being taken ill and was flown to Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital.

His staff described his condition as myocardial ischaemia - the same problem that landed him in hospital for two weeks in July - and said he would not need an operation. But even if the illness, which restricts the flow of blood to the heart, turns out only to be a minor bout, it places a question mark over whether he will run for next year's presidential elections, or whether he would stand much chance of victory

This will be a blow, as he had been behaving increasingly like a candidate, albeit an erratic one. Before his latest trip he sought to shore up his presidency by saying he would sack his unpopular Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, as soon as he had a replacement. The following day he suddenly backtracked.

His ambition to stay in office was on graphic display in the US when he presented President Clinton with two Moscow Penguins ice hockey shirts emblazoned with the names "Clinton" and "Yeltsin". On the back, writ large, was the number "96" - election year for both nations.

Comeback in tatters, page 13