Yeltsin, in TV Chat, Insists He’s Steering Russia

President Boris N. Yeltsin looked remarkably healthier Tuesday in his second television appearance since a heart ailment sent him into the hospital Oct. 26 and sent the diplomatic world into a new bout of Kremlin-watching.

Dressed in a dark suit and tie for the nearly 10-minute interview, Yeltsin sought to assure Russians that parliamentary elections will go ahead as planned next month and that he remains firmly in charge.

“I am holding and controlling the wheel of this large boat that is Russia, and I have my finger on the pulse,” the 64-year-old leader told state-run Russian television.

On Nov. 3, Yeltsin was shown in a brief and heavily edited film clip, looking pale and unconvincing as he slurred out assurances that he was on the mend.

In his more plausible performance Tuesday, Yeltsin dismissed media reports that he was considering surgery to correct his myocardial ischemia--a recurring condition that restricts the heart’s blood supply.

The president’s emphatic insistence that Dec. 17 elections will take place on time reinforced similar assurances from his aides.

Most political movements have condemned Russia’s new election law as seriously flawed, and a group of deputies of the current Duma, or lower house of Parliament, last week appealed to the Constitutional Court for a ruling on the law’s validity.

By insisting that the vote be held as scheduled despite the law’s shortcomings, Yeltsin has kept open the door to a court annulment of the results, as occurred in Kazakhstan after March, 1994, elections there produced a Parliament strongly opposed to President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.

Coincidentally, it was Nazarbayev with whom Yeltsin was meeting Tuesday when the Russian Television crew was allowed to film the Russian leader.

Nazarbayev, in Moscow en route to France, was Yeltsin’s first foreign visitor since he was hospitalized.