Pale, Unsteady Yeltsin Meets Gore at Summer Retreat

Pale, stiff and unsteady on his feet, President Boris N. Yeltsin met Tuesday with U.S. Vice President Al Gore, his first foreign visitor since he dropped from public view three weeks ago. Gore said the Russian leader “looked very good” and was “actively engaged” during 45 minutes of wide-ranging talks.

“He seems to be in good health,” Gore told reporters after the meeting at the Kremlin’s walled summer retreat in Barvikha, four miles west of Moscow. “He was relaxed, smiling.”

Yeltsin’s ability to govern has been thrown into question since the 65-year-old leader fell ill last month, before his July 3 reelection, with what aides called a cold. His public appearances had been limited to edited television clips, and the abrupt postponement of his talks with Gore on Monday only deepened the concerns about his health.

But accounts of the meeting Tuesday and a series of high-level Kremlin appointments indicate that Yeltsin, who was hospitalized twice last year with heart ailments, is fully in charge of shaping his second administration, even though it is unclear whether he is well enough to survive it.

Despite Gore’s upbeat description, reporters allowed to watch the start of the meeting said Yeltsin appeared to have trouble walking and has lost considerable weight since the election campaign.

He shuffled gingerly, staring at the floor, while waiting for Gore in a third-story room of the cream-colored sanitarium. When Gore arrived, the American scurried across the room to shake Yeltsin’s hand, apparently to spare his host any unnecessary movement.

Yeltsin’s pallid face lighted up when Gore congratulated him on defeating a Communist rival after a vigorous, 4 1/2-month reelection campaign that featured the incumbent twisting on stage to rock music. “I particularly admired your dancing techniques, which I saw on television,” Gore quipped.

“This is the kind of thing you learn when you run for office,” Yeltsin replied after a laugh.

Behind closed doors, Gore said later, he and Yeltsin discussed a range of bilateral issues, including the postelection flare-up of the Kremlin’s war against separatists in Chechnya.

Gore said he urged Yeltsin, who had arranged a May 27 cease-fire to help deflect criticism of him by rival candidates, to restore the truce and resume negotiations with rebels in the breakaway southern republic.

But the vice president refrained from public criticism of renewed Russian assaults in Chechnya, which have claimed dozens of civilian lives in the past week.

He told reporters: “It’s fair to say that [Yeltsin] believes in negotiations and wants to see an end to the violence, but he is determined that any attacks from the other side be met with a vigorous response.”

“It is easy to understand why the Americans are downplaying the hostilities in Chechnya and Yeltsin’s poor health,” said Andrei Kortunov, an independent Russian political analyst. “The White House needs to prove to its own electorate that its strategy of supporting Yeltsin was correct, that everything in Russia is under control.

“Yeltsin cannot be too well, but what Gore is stressing is that Yeltsin is well enough to control the situation in Russia for now, and this is what really interests the United States.”

Indeed, Kremlin watchers say Yeltsin has paid careful attention in recent weeks to the makeup of his second administration, balancing competing factions.

After tapping retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed to head his Security Council, Yeltsin on Monday named free-market reformer Anatoly B. Chubais to be presidential chief of staff. Chubais, whose appointment Gore hailed as “visionary,” is expected to curb Lebed’s ambition to influence economic policy.

And despite signs that the hawkish Lebed has taken control of policy in Chechnya, Yeltsin has confirmed Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin’s role as head of the government commission seeking peace there. Chernomyrdin assured Gore on Tuesday that Russia will comply with a peace accord and withdraw all but its standing regiments from the southern republic by Sept. 1.

“Yeltsin never lets anyone take over while he feels capable of making responsible decisions,” said Otto R. Latsis, a former member of the Presidential Council.

Still, Yeltsin’s aides have had trouble explaining his erratic behavior and breach of protocol.

Yeltsin’s carefully planned Monday meeting with the vice president was postponed with less than an hour’s notice when Yeltsin left the Kremlin for Barvikha. Presidential Press Secretary Sergei K. Medvedev said Yeltsin decided on the spur of the moment to start his vacation early “because the weather in the area is so good.”

But Yeltsin’s retreat to Barvikha was clearly motivated by failing health. Medvedev said the president was exhausted, had not had a checkup since late last year, had been too busy even to have his blood pressure measured and might, if necessary, undergo unspecified medical procedures during his planned two-week rest.

The jockeying for power around Yeltsin is expected to intensify if he remains ill. Chernomyrdin, his prime minister for 3 1/2 years, would take over if he died or became incapacitated but would have to call an election within three months.

Lebed and Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov are also mentioned as likely contenders to succeed Yeltsin. But it is the stolid, 58-year-old prime minister, a cautious reformer and consensus-builder, whom the Clinton administration has cultivated more than any other figure around the president.

Gore, accompanied by eight U.S. Cabinet officials, came to Moscow on Saturday to preside with Chernomyrdin over the seventh of their semiannual meetings to promote the nuts and bolts of U.S.-Russian cooperation--in fields ranging from business development to nuclear safety to cooperation in space.

Gore announced that the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. has approved $620 million in new financing and insurance for 22 U.S. ventures in Russia and that the two countries will form a joint Capital Markets Forum to develop a securities market here.

Times staff writer Amy Harmon contributed to this article.