Clinton Delays Yeltsin Summit President Says He Feels Fine, But Takes Extra Day Before Flying To Finland

President Clinton came home from the hospital Sunday, saying he felt fine after his knee surgery but agreeing to a one-day delay on his Helsinki summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Clinton had been scheduled to leave for Finland on Tuesday, meet with Yeltsin over two days, then travel to Denmark. Now, he will give himself more recuperating time by leaving on Wednesday and putting off the Denmark visit until this summer.

Vice President Al Gore will pick up most of the president’s schedule early in the week.

On Saturday, the day after surgeons reattached the tendon to his right knee, Clinton allowed he had been a “little sore” after the pain-killing anesthesia had worn off.

“But I feel fine today,” he said. “I’ve done two days of therapy, learned to use my crutches.”

Press secretary Mike McCurry, who briefed reporters at the White House, said the president has been insistent that his meeting with Yeltsin go forward in Helsinki, but did not argue when his senior aides on Saturday offered him a scaleddown schedule. Erskine Bowles, the president’s chief of staff, and the National Security Council staff recommended the change, McCurry said.

“He’s anticipating (the trip) with a fair amount of relish,” McCurry said.

At the top of the agenda for the two leaders is the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has worried the Russians.

“This is really a meeting in which the two presidents are going to look ahead to the 21st century and think about the role the United States and Russia will play in the post-Cold War era,” McCurry said.

He described the summit as a routine “working meeting” with no “major agreements to negotiate” and no “dramatic breakthroughs” expected. The meeting had been arranged for Helsinki, rather than the United States to accommodate Yeltsin, who underwent heart by-pass surgery last fall and suffered a bout of pneumonia in January.

The president is scheduled to attend a NATO summit in Spain this July and will visit Denmark then, McCurry said.

The president injured his leg early Friday morning when he stumbled on a step at golfer Greg Norman’s home in Florida. He was flown back to Washington on Friday morning and underwent surgery that afternoon at the National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md.

McCurry reported the president was up and around a bit on Saturday, but he suffered quite a bit of pain in his injured leg when he returned to bed.

On Sunday, the president’s doctors reported that he was well enough to go home and travel by mid-week.

“There’s no reason to hold him back,” said Dr. Marlene DeMaio, a Navy orthopedic surgeon who will accompany the president to Helsinki along with his regular medical team. “He’s doing well. He’s fully alert, chipper,” she said.

The president’s doctors said he was still taking several non-narcotic drugs to relieve some pain, and will be continuing sessions started at the hospital with a physical therapist. Full recovery with resumption of his jogging and golfing is several months away, they said.

The president returned to the White House just before noon in a specially equipped van that the Secret Service borrowed from former White House press secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed in the shooting attack on former President Ronald Reagan nearly 14 years ago.

Clinton was taken inside on a wheelchair, which his doctors said he would probably be using occasionally for the rest of the week.

Upstairs in the first family’s private quarters, McCurry said some furniture had been moved and some carpets taped down so that the president could maneuver more easily in his wheelchair or on crutches.

Clinton, 50, told reporters that he wasn’t suffering any continuing pain, but he was nonetheless adjusting as his knee began to mend.

“You just have to learn to use a few different muscles,” he said. “It’s like going back to school and learning some new things.”

First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was eager that he come home before she and their daughter, Chelsea, left on a two-week tour of Africa, he said. Their trip already had been delayed a day.

“She and Chelsea wanted me well settled, so that’s what I’m doing,” he said.

The president, joking with a reporter, said he wasn’t expecting any “sympathy votes” from Congress while he was recuperating, but that he would “take them any way I can get them.