Yeltsin Eases Doubts About Health : Russia: He appears on television to dispel speculation caused by apparently dated photo.

Trying to dispel speculation about his health, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin appeared on television here looking rosy and alert Tuesday, a week after he was hospitalized with acute chest pains.

In an interview from the Kremlin hospital where he is reportedly being treated for a constriction of the blood supply to his heart, the 64-year-old Siberian, wearing an Adidas track suit, described his ailment as a “heart seizure.” He promised he would be back at work soon.

Sergei K. Medvedev, his spokesman, said Yeltsin would have to spend an unspecified period recovering in a care facility after his release from the hospital.

Yeltsin said he had exchanged sharp words with his doctors, who have delayed his release from the hospital for a week. “The doctors cannot give me an exact date” of release, he said. “I insisted on a speedy discharge. They said, ‘No, you must recover completely.’ ”

Yeltsin said doctors had told him he would make a full recovery and would “without a doubt” be able to resume his normal activities, including playing tennis, his favorite sport.

Yeltsin was also shown receiving flowers and a kiss from Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. He said he had met with Chernomyrdin and other aides to discuss economic and personnel issues, as well as Russia’s latest proposal for the peace talks in Chechnya, which have reached an impasse but are scheduled to resume Thursday in the Chechen capital, Grozny.

Yeltsin’s appearance may have been aimed at cooling feverish speculation that Kremlin aides were concealing the extent of the president’s illness. The discovery that an official photograph supposedly showing Yeltsin recuperating in the hospital appeared to be more than 3 months old revived nagging doubts about the Russian leader’s health and the veracity of his closest aides.

Perhaps embarrassed at being accused of a Soviet-style disinformation trick, press secretary Medvedev allowed Ostankino television into the hospital for the first time to see Yeltsin.

The Kremlin has released a stream of vague medical reports claiming that Yeltsin is much improved and has remained in charge of affairs of state despite his illness. But only his wife and a few top aides have reportedly been permitted to see him; there has been no independent information about his medical condition.

The flap over the photo began when a sharp-eyed Italian reporter looked at the official photograph of Yeltsin published in Saturday’s newspapers and remembered having seen an identical image during the president’s April vacation in southern Russia. “I immediately noticed the T-shirt,” said Antonio Caprarica, chief correspondent for RAI Television in Moscow, who remembered the April 3 footage shot during Yeltsin’s visit to Kislovodsk.

The photo and video footage appear strikingly similar, from Yeltsin’s T-shirt to the placement of four telephones near his left hand to the wallpaper.

Without offering an explanation for the similarities, Medvedev insisted that the picture was shot Friday evening.

The flap over the photo’s authenticity, as well as other recent heavy-handed tactics by the government, testifies to the continuing tension between the Soviet-style political culture of aggressive obedience and fierce secrecy that seems to endure inside the Kremlin and the reality of a new Russia where crude strong-arm tactics often fail.

On Tuesday, for example, under pressure from international human rights groups, the Russian government released a hunger-striking representative of Chechen President Dzhokar M. Dudayev who had been jailed for a month without charges. Khamat Kurbanov was arrested last month after rebel Chechen commander Shamil Basayev seized more than 1,000 hostages in the southern Russian city of Budennovsk. At the time, Alexander Mikhailov, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the domestic arm of the former KGB, accused Kurbanov of espionage and said incriminating documents were found in his office.