Yeltsin Offers to Share Power in New Bid for Russian Presidency

Populist maverick Boris N. Yeltsin on Monday renewed his bid to become president of Russia, the Soviet Union’s largest republic, and offered conservatives a share in a coalition government.

Yeltsin failed to muster enough votes in the first two rounds of balloting.

In the latest round on Saturday, he fell 28 votes short of the 531 needed in the Russian Congress.

On Monday, Yeltsin told the 1,060-member Congress he is willing to form a coalition with his opponents.

He invited members of the Communist Party bloc and others to “work out a deal that would please the majority of Russian deputies.”

Yeltsin’s opponents in today’s contest will be the republic’s current prime minister, Alexander V. Vlasov, and Valentin Tsoy, a little-known businessman from the Soviet Far East.

In a switch to block Yeltsin’s candidacy for the Russian presidency, the Communist Party dropped its support for hard-liner Ivan K. Polozkov and resurrected Vlasov’s candidacy.

Vlasov, the candidate initially picked by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, withdrew in apparent disgrace Friday after a lackluster defense of the Kremlin leader’s policies.

But he rejoined the contest Monday, and Polozkov, a party boss from Krasnodar in southern Russia, pulled out.

Russia, the largest of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, stretches from the Baltic to the Pacific and includes Moscow and many major cities. It is home to more than half the country’s population.

Yeltsin called on the deputies to reject the central Soviet government’s program for a transition to a partial market economy, which was announced last week.

“The Congress must take the citizens of Russia under its defense,” he said.

Discontent over the economic program, which will double food prices, has boosted Yeltsin’s chances, his backers say.