Yeltsin Issues Aid Plea to Gathering of Diplomats : Russia: President says his failure in upcoming referendum could destabilize the world and bring back the nuclear menace.

President Boris N. Yeltsin gathered Moscow’s diplomatic corps in the Kremlin on Friday and made an unabashed pitch for more foreign aid to safeguard his presidency, which Russians will judge in a referendum later this month.

The consequences of his failure or ouster, Yeltsin warned, could be worldwide destabilization and a renewal of the nuclear menace.

“Russian changes will bring feasible results more quickly if the developed nations render assistance,” said Yeltsin, who won a pledge of $1.6 billion in increased U.S. aid at last weekend’s summit with President Clinton.

With Russia’s troubled transition to a democratic, market-based state in more jeopardy than ever, the country is “faced with a decisive choice, which is being watched by all mankind,” Yeltsin said.

He stressed that the diplomats’ countries also have a big stake in seeing him succeed.

“The energy of disintegration will destroy everything in its path. It will not only bury Russian reforms but destabilize the entire world situation for a long time,” Yeltsin said, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. “It is hardly conceivable that in this situation the ‘nuclear factor’ would not come into play.”

Yeltsin had Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev break off a trip to Central Asia to attend the meeting with Moscow-based ambassadors, which took place over lunch in the gilded Palace of Facets. Kozyrev will also be taking part in a key meeting of ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies next week, his ministry confirmed in Moscow.

That two-day session in Tokyo is expected to produce a multibillion-dollar aid package for Russia, with even more multilateral assistance to come at the G-7 summit in Japan this July.

Yeltsin told the ambassadors that he was bullish on the impact of the new U.S. aid, although it cannot possibly arrive in time to bolster his chances in the April 25 referendum.

“I hope the ‘Clinton package,’ as I call it, will contribute to the Russian entrance to high-tech and service markets, as well as the increase of investments in the Russian economy,” he said.

As Yeltsin was addressing the foreign VIPs, his most powerful foe, Parliament Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, was attending a meeting of elected legislators from throughout the country at another Moscow locale.

In the most acid terms he has used to date, the economist from the Chechen people of the North Caucasus called for Yeltsin’s defeat in the referendum by likening the president and his entourage to the crazed czarist monk Grigory Rasputin.

“All good citizens in this country should start thinking it over, as opposed to the shady characters who conduct political intrigues,” Khasbulatov said. “Who will take power? Shall we be happy with a collective Rasputin, or not?”

As the referendum nears, Khasbulatov demanded that he and his allies be allowed equal access to often outrageously pro-Yeltsin television and radio stations in order to campaign. He also claimed to have received reports of tens of millions in rubles supposedly being extorted from businesses, factories and even churches to bribe citizens to vote in Yeltsin’s favor, but he offered no proof.

On the April 25 ballot, Russians will be asked whether they support Yeltsin, whether they back his government’s reform agenda and whether they want the president and the Russian Parliament to have to run for early reelection.

Many unresolved issues remain, including the tally Yeltsin needs to claim victory.

If he loses, the president told a group of Russian newspaper editors Friday, he would be ready to stand again for reelection but would not resign unless he lost that election too.

In his remarks, Khasbulatov also endorsed the idea of holding early elections for president and Parliament, so that may be the sole exit Russia now has from its current political deadlock.