Ailing Yeltsin Well Enough To Meet Clinton

President Boris Yeltsin needs several more weeks to recover from his ailments, but he will be ready to meet President Clinton next month, his doctor said Thursday.

Barring new problems, Yeltsin will be “absolutely ready” to give a major address to parliament March 6 and fly to Finland for a summit meeting with Clinton on March 20-21, chief Kremlin doctor Sergei Mironov said.

“He needs another three or four weeks to become absolutely well,” said Mironov, who described Yeltsin’s condition as satisfactory.

Until then, Mironov said the president should make no more than three trips a week to his office.

Yeltsin has been working only part-time since suffering a heart attack last June, days before he was re-elected to a four-year term. He ad heart bypass surgery in November, and fell ill in January only two weeks after he returned to the Kremlin.

The doctor said Yeltsin should have remained hospitalized for at least a month after he contracted pneumonia in early January, but the president left after only 12 days.

“We can only give recommendations … for rest,” the doctor told Echo Moscow radio. “Boris Nikolayevich works all the time, signing decrees and other documents by the kilogram.”

The speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, on Thursday demanded that lawmakers be given a full report on Yeltsin’s health.

“This is not idle curiosity of deputies,” speaker Gennady Seleznyov said. “The question of the health of the head of state is increasingly worrying the entire society.”

Some Russian media have reported the Kremlin and Yeltsin’s doctors have not disclosed the full extent of the president’s health problems, though they have not been able to provide any evidence.

The president has been increasingly active in recent days. He met Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday and will greet Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Friday.

Yeltsin smiled broadly and moved easily in brief appearances before television cameras this week, looking much better than in other recent broadcasts, where he seemed stiff and uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, Yeltsin’s critics claim he is too sick to effectively govern the troubled country and should step down.