Doctors Reportedly Advise Against Yeltsin Surgery

Fresh concerns arose Tuesday about the ability of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to survive his upcoming heart surgery, even as Security Council chief Alexander I. Lebed, the politician most openly angling to succeed him, emerged ever stronger from an opposition attack on his Chechnya peace plan.

The power struggle in the Kremlin--between the ailing Yeltsin’s inner circle and the widely popular Lebed--has spilled over the crenelated walls of the red-brick Russian government fortress to dominate the airwaves, news pages and government briefings.

Yeltsin’s spokesman and his doctors were besieged with demands for full disclosure of the president’s condition after the Echo of Moscow radio station carried a detailed report from cardiologists at the clinic where Yeltsin is supposed to undergo surgery advising against risking the president’s life with a bypass operation. The respected station quoted unidentified specialists at the state Cardiology Research Center as saying complications from anemia and unsatisfactory liver function would give Yeltsin no more than a 40% chance of survival.

“It’s not true,” presidential spokesman Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky said at a Kremlin briefing when asked about the report. “Preparation for this surgical intervention is going on according to plan.”

He said that the diagnosis attributed to the cardiologists “does not correspond with the facts” and that recent analysis of Yeltsin’s blood showed improvement since a medical team examined him in late September and recommended postponing surgery because of anemia and blood loss.

Echo of Moscow said Yeltsin’s extremely low hemoglobin reading “makes a heart operation for the Russian president virtually impossible in the foreseeable future.”

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The head of the presidential medical center, Dr. Sergei Mironov, also rushed to deny the reports, insisting that “there is no reason to say Boris Yeltsin is beyond having an operation.”

Dr. Renat Akchurin, the heart specialist expected to perform the surgery, has been traveling in Germany and the United States for the last few days--a trip he told the Itar-Tass news agency was in no way connected with the forthcoming operation.

Yeltsin has spent all but a handful of days since winning reelection July 3 away from his office, either bedridden at the Central Clinical Hospital or at a sanatorium in the Moscow suburb of Barvikha. His absence has fostered unabashed jockeying for power between Lebed and Kremlin insiders working to elevate the electoral chances of Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, a moderate reformer with little popular trust because of the vast personal wealth he has accumulated while in office.

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In contrast, Lebed, a pugnacious 46-year-old retired army general, has virtually no governing experience but has won a loyal and growing following with his vows to crack down on corruption and restore national pride.

Lebed was summoned to a closed-door session of both houses of parliament Tuesday to defend the Aug. 31 peace agreement he signed with Chechen rebels that has been surprisingly successful in halting the bloodshed. Hawkish legislators and government officials accused Lebed of treason in leaving open the question of Chechnya’s proclaimed sovereignty for the next five years.

But legislators who spoke about the allegedly secret hearings dismissed the session as little more than the venting of vitriol over Lebed’s success in intervening where others had failed.

“Lebed’s main achievement has been that he found an exit from this awful situation,” said Sergei A. Kovalev, a legislator and former human rights commissioner for Russia. “It may not be a graceful or thoughtful one, but it is an exit.”

Unbowed, Lebed emerged from the hearings with a verbal potshot for his detractors. “They tried to educate me,” he said sarcastically in an exchange with journalists at the Trud newspaper office.

Lebed has forged a dubious alliance with Gen. Alexander V. Korzhakov, an ousted Yeltsin confidant and former chief presidential bodyguard, in apparent preparation for a run at the Kremlin leadership once the job is open.

Yeltsin’s surgery was put off until mid-November or early December, but speculation has been rampant that announced plans for an operation may be only a smoke screen to allow further delay of another presidential election. If Yeltsin were to die or become incapacitated, Chernomyrdin would become acting head of state but would be obliged to hold new elections within three months.