Clinton Courts Leaders of Russian Opposition : Diplomacy: President holds ‘power breakfast’ with Yeltsin’s rivals, who plead for U.S. help.

Hedging his bets in the evolving political scene here, President Clinton courted Russian opposition leaders Thursday and took the measure of support for reform among possible successors to President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Although the 10 opposition party and faction leaders invited for a “power breakfast” with the President ranged across the political spectrum, from yuppie free-market advocates to Communists seeking a comeback, they spoke with one voice in appealing for U.S. support in nurturing democracy in Russia.

Economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky told journalists that the discussion often touched on Russia’s deadly military crackdown on secessionist Chechnya, which he said he used as an example of how the Yeltsin leadership is out of touch with the people.

“What we have now is a kind of semi-democracy,” the 42-year-old reform advocate said. “The press and the people can say whatever they like, but the authorities don’t listen.”

One of the more liberal, market-oriented political leaders and a likely challenger to Yeltsin in June, 1996, presidential elections, Yavlinsky said he and others at the breakfast appealed for Clinton’s engagement to ensure free, fair parliamentary elections in December.

After his three-hour meeting with Yeltsin on Wednesday, Clinton had made a point of assuring Russians that their president had no plan to postpone what promises to be a freewheeling campaign and unpredictable ballot. But the party leaders told Clinton that just holding the elections on time would not be enough.

“It is more important that they be just and democratic,” said Yavlinsky after the hour meeting at U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering’s official residence, Spaso House.

Yavlinsky quoted late Soviet-era dictator Josef Stalin in warning: “It’s not important who wins an election, it’s important who counts the votes.”

Yeltsin now polls only single-digit support among dispirited Russians, who have come to regard reforms carried out under his administration as the cause of skyrocketing prices, a collapsed social security system, crime, instability and growing unemployment.

A poll released earlier this week by the Public Opinion research firm reported that 75% of respondents said they do not trust Yeltsin, and the organization deemed the president “unelectable.”

Clinton himself faces evaporating political support and an ever-critical opposition from the Republican Party. His domestic woes prompted one U.S. attache at the opposition breakfast to fret privately over whether the session with Clinton might harm rather than help the election prospects of Yeltsin’s rivals.

But former economics chief Yegor T. Gaidar praised the President for taking time to meet with the opposition.

Gaidar credited Clinton with “a correct and courageous deed” in attending Tuesday’s Victory Day celebrations in Moscow, despite Republicans’ claims that a visit with Yeltsin now sends a signal of U.S. tolerance for Russian aggression in rebellious Chechnya.

Many Russian veterans and voters have said over the past few days of celebration and summitry that they appreciated Clinton’s participation at May 9 events commemorating 50 years since the Allied victory and did not necessarily see it as unquestioned support for Yeltsin.

“It’s important that he came. We will remember this,” Viktor P. Kashirin, 73, a war veteran from the Baltic port of Kaliningrad, said of Clinton’s visit.

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Despite public doubts inflicted by the prolonged, painful transition to democracy and a market-based economy, all of the party leaders assured Clinton that they remained supportive of reform.

One likely reason the talk in the elegant oval dining room of Spaso House was so congenial: Radical nationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky was not invited.

Although Zhirinovsky’s political support often ranks equally with Yavlinsky’s and higher than Yeltsin’s in polls, diplomats said inclusion of the confrontational, oft-outrageous leader of the Liberal Democratic Party was deemed counterproductive to fruitful dialogue.

Pickering recommended the guest list to the President, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.