Yeltsin Fails to Get a Top Law Official Fired

An increasingly feeble President Boris N. Yeltsin took a serious political body blow Wednesday when the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, defied his attempts to get rid of the country’s prosecutor general.

In a murky political intrigue, a grubby video reportedly exposing the prosecutor, Yuri Skuratov, in a sex romp was mysteriously circulated to the media and Federation Council members on the eve of the council’s Wednesday session to decide his future. But the move backfired--and Skuratov held on to his job, firing off accusations that government ministers, ultra-rich oligarchs, top Central Bank officials and former deputy prime ministers had all plotted to get rid of him because of his crusade against corruption.

The Federation Council has to endorse the removal of the prosecutor general and approve any new candidate for the job. Its decision to defy Yeltsin’s request that it accept the prosecutor’s resignation--which Skuratov now says was tendered under extreme pressure--starkly marked out the limits on the president’s authority.

In recent months, Yeltsin has been struggling to reassert his waning power, popping up sporadically between long absences and bouts of hospitalization, usually sacking an official or two to make his presence felt. But now even his ability to assert control by removing government officials is in question.

The scene is set for a presidential confrontation with the Federation Council, but analysts doubt Yeltsin’s chances of pulling off the kind of punchy victory that used to be his trademark.

Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, Yeltsin’s former campaign image maker and now president of the Politika Fund think tank, said Yeltsin wanted Skuratov out because the prosecutor general’s corruption investigations got too close to the Kremlin leader’s family and associates.

In a country mired in economic crisis, desperate to win the Western favor that might bring International Monetary Fund credits, the highest echelons of power are caught in a corrosive power struggle, where the motives are opaque and the tactics ruthless.

Skuratov made some powerful enemies when he launched several high-level corruption investigations. He exposed the Central Bank for secretly transferring a fortune in state hard currency reserves to a Channel Islands company, FIMAKO. He asked Swiss police to investigate corruption by top Russian administration figures involved with government construction contracts handed to a Swiss firm.

And Feb. 2, prosecutors raided a company associated with Boris A. Berezovsky, a powerful Russian tycoon, over the illegal tapping of Yeltsin family phones. Skuratov announced his resignation the same day and disappeared for several weeks.

The official explanation for Skuratov’s resignation was “health reasons”--but few believed it, especially after staff at the Central Clinic, where he reportedly checked in, said they had no such patient on their lists.

Addressing the Federation Council on Wednesday, the prosecutor general said he felt forced to resign, hinting that Berezovsky was among the powerful group that made his life intolerable, running a “dirty campaign” to undermine his standing with Yeltsin.

“Finally, they used information concerning my private life, obtained illegally, in order to finish me,” he said, referring to the compromising videotape.

Yeltsin, in the hospital because of a bleeding ulcer, met with Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov after Wednesday’s Federation Council vote and made clear his opposition to the decision. A Kremlin statement said the two leaders agreed that “only morally untainted people could combat crime” and that “unscrupulousness and politicking are incompatible with the high post of prosecutor general.”

Presidential spokesman Dmitri D. Yakushkin later said the president was extremely unhappy with Skuratov’s actions. He said Yeltsin might again press the Federation Council to accept Skuratov’s resignation.

Oleg N. Susuyev, first deputy chief of presidential staff, said Skuratov had become a pawn in the hands of political extremists and hard-liners. “I think . . . the Federation Council will eventually take the correct decision and will not take part in this struggle with unpredictable consequences.”

But Sergei A. Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, said that unless Yeltsin could prove clear wrongdoing by the prosecutor, he had little chance of winning in a struggle with the Federation Council, which would reject any new candidate he proposed.

“It’s a big problem for the president. I think Yeltsin has no chance of forcing Skuratov out. I think his power is shrinking. Yeltsin is jealous of Primakov, and any problem for Yeltsin is an indirect victory for Primakov, because Primakov is now the main rival to Yeltsin,” Markov said.

The conflict is an echo of the showdown in September when the Duma, the lower house of parliament, rejected Yeltsin’s choice for prime minister, forcing him to put forward Primakov as a compromise. The president has still not recovered from that blow to his authority.

Political analyst Nikonov said the presidential family had overestimated its power to manipulate the Federation Council. He believes that it was the Kremlin that circulated the compromising video, in what had proved a big mistake.