Top Yeltsin Aide Calls for Delay in Presidential Vote

MOSCOW — President Boris N. Yeltsin’s powerful security chief called Sunday for postponement of the June 16 presidential election, saying Russia’s electorate is too polarized to accept the results without bloodshed.

The advice by Gen. Alexander V. Korzhakov is the first time a Kremlin official has publicly urged Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected leader, to take undemocratic steps to prevent a Communist return to power.

Korzhakov made his appeal in separate interviews with Russia’s Interfax news agency and the Observer, a British newspaper, after one of the busiest weeks of political intrigue since Yeltsin entered the race Feb. 15 as an underdog to the Communist Party leader, Gennady A. Zyuganov.

“If we have the elections, there is no way of avoiding a fight,” the general was quoted as saying. “If Yeltsin wins, the radical opposition will rush into the streets claiming the results were falsified, and there will be unrest. If Zyuganov wins, even if he wants to take a centrist line, the same people won’t let him and they’ll scream.

“It is inadmissible that Russians fight against Russians again,” he added.

Korzhakov concluded that more time is needed for voters to “think calmly and reach a mature conclusion” about their choice.

The chief presidential spokesman and the head of Russia’s independent Central Election Commission reacted promptly, insisting that voting will be held on schedule.

*

But Korzhakov is one of the two men closest to Yeltsin, and his advice has carried the day on matters ranging from oil export policy to the Kremlin’s decision to declare war on separatists in Chechnya. Few in Moscow believe he would make such a statement, even one cast as a personal opinion, without a go-ahead from the boss.

Yeltsin has been gaining on Zyuganov in most voter surveys. Results from one poll taken by Russia’s Gallup affiliate and aired Sunday night by the news program “Itogi” showed the two men even, each polling 28%, with the 10 other candidates in single digits.

A few polls, however, show Yeltsin still far behind his Communist rival.

The idea to delay the election has been floated often in recent weeks by lower-ranking Kremlin aides who spoke on condition of anonymity. Under the 1993 constitution he drafted, Yeltsin could call for a delay only by declaring a state of emergency on grounds that the country’s stability is under threat.

Yevgeny Kiselev, the anchor on “Itogi,” called the statements by the usually reclusive security chief “a clearly planned action” and “a desperate move” by the Kremlin. Other analysts said it was only the latest Kremlin ploy aimed at startling Yeltsin’s rivals with talk of bloodshed and at shaking up the race in his favor.

The intrigue appears to date to April 26, when 13 millionaire bankers and industrialists with close ties to the Kremlin issued an unusual manifesto urging Yeltsin, Zyuganov and other political forces to make “serious mutual compromises” to keep the election from degenerating into civil war.

Although the millionaires didn’t say what compromises they had in mind, two Kremlin officials embraced their manifesto as a reasonable idea and said Yeltsin would soon hold talks with Communist leaders, possibly to offer them positions in a reshuffled Cabinet.

Zyuganov on Sunday expressed willingness to meet with Yeltsin, but he ruled out dropping his candidacy and said delaying the election would be “not a compromise but a rude violation of the constitution and law.”

Yeltsin has met separately with the strongest of the other candidates, retired army Gen. Alexander I. Lebed and free-market economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky. The two men are a threat to the president because they are talking of uniting, possibly with others, into a “third force” that might displace Yeltsin as Zyuganov’s most serious rival.

Russian news media have speculated that Yeltsin will try to tempt Lebed, Yavlinsky or both out of the race with a high government post. But no such deal was announced after either meeting, and it was not clear if anything was offered.

“When the president asked me what I wanted, I told him I want to win the election,” Yavlinsky said in an interview on “Itogi.” He said his meeting in the Kremlin on Sunday, which lasted more than two hours, covered his differences with Yeltsin on economic reform, the war in Chechnya and post-Soviet Russia’s range of social problems.

“We talked not about removing anyone’s candidacy,” he added, “but about . . . serious changes in policy.”

While Kremlin maneuvering over selection of a leader has never been so open, it is not clear where all this is leading. Yavlinsky suggested that behind-the-scenes talks are far from over and might still result in some kind of deal.

He said Yeltsin was “attentive” to his views and might meet with him again to discuss them in more detail, along with ideas for installing new officials to carry out revamped policies.

“We did not discuss concrete people that are to be replaced,” Yavlinsky said. “But it is clear that people to blame for major failures, for bloodshed, must be held responsible.”