Either Call Election or He Will, Yeltsin Warns Lawmakers : Russia: The president doesn’t have the legal right to declare a vote for Parliament. Legislators fear he’s flirting with violating the constitution.

With Russia’s political squabbles nearly out of control, President Boris N. Yeltsin declared Thursday that the country absolutely must hold an election this fall to end its chronic crisis--and if Parliament fails to call one, he will do so himself.

“If Parliament does not take this decision,” Yeltsin told a meeting of Russian media chiefs, “the president will take this decision for them.”

Because Yeltsin does not have the legal right to call elections, his threat prompted widespread anxiety among lawmakers that the Russian president is once again flirting with the idea of violating the constitution.

In March, Yeltsin unleashed full-fledged political panic when he announced on national television that he was imposing emergency rule and scheduling a national referendum on whether he or lawmakers should govern. Some aides went so far as to predict civil war, but the crisis abated when Yeltsin backed down.

This time, Yeltsin appeared to be serving notice once again that he is sick and tired of his endless battles with conservative lawmakers over everything from the budget to name-calling. He had already predicted earlier this week that September would be a climactic month in Russia’s political battles.

Yeltsin’s political archenemy, Parliament Speaker Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, told television viewers in a special address that Yeltsin is preparing a new “provocation” for the last 10 days of August, warning: “You have to be vigilant. We can’t let adventurists throw the country into chaos.

“Wherever you are,” he urged, “be very attentive and ready for action.”

The latest confrontation between Yeltsin and Parliament capped several days of mutual recriminations. Khasbulatov told a gathering of army officers that the Yeltsin administration’s policies are designed to serve foreign intelligence agencies. Yeltsin’s spokesman called Khasbulatov a cockroach and a “maniac.”

Yeltsin’s opponents spread rumors that the president, who cut off his vacation July 25 to deal with a surprise ruble reform, was ill and receiving transfusions. Yeltsin responded that his opponents ought to have their own health checked--implying that their mental health was most in doubt.

The bickering between the two branches of power, while comic, is slowing economic reforms and sowing confusion at home and abroad about who controls what. In a recent interview, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev decried the tug of war and joined Yeltsin’s call for prompt elections well before the scheduled end of Parliament’s term in 1995.

“These people have pulled us all into such manure and mutual mudslinging,” he told Radio Liberty and The Times. “This so discredits the federal bodies of power before their own people and the world that they have no trust left to them.”

Most recently, Yeltsin’s wrangling with lawmakers has centered on the issues of privatization and the state budget. Parliament tried to suspend the government’s selloff of state property into private hands, prompting furious return salvos from Yeltsin’s own chief of privatization and a presidential decree voiding Parliament’s decision.

What really made Yeltsin’s free-market economists tear their hair, however, was the budget Parliament passed that would inflate the national deficit to $22 billion, all but dooming the reformers’ efforts to brake inflation and introduce strict control over public spending.

“I will not sign that budget under any circumstances,” Yeltsin said Thursday. “It leads to economic disruption.”

Yeltsin has the right to veto the budget, but chances are that Parliament will override his veto.

No matter how frustrated Yeltsin gets, he cannot simply call elections under the current constitution.

“Yeltsin has no right to do this,” said Gennady Gurevich, a legal adviser to the Russian Constitutional Court. “Early elections for Parliament is the prerogative of the Congress. In any other country, this would be treated as a threat to the existing political system.”

That was how opposition lawmakers were treating Yeltsin’s declaration, even though many deputies support new elections.

Yeltsin appears ready to become “a putschist,” legislator Gennady Sayenko complained.

Yeltsin’s advisers indicated that he might be able to find a constitutional way to force elections, perhaps by holding a referendum like the one last April in which he gained a strong showing of support. That way, he could claim a popular mandate to dissolve Parliament.