Yeltsin May Be Headed for Showdown With Top Rival

This week is shaping up as a watershed for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, as allegations of bribes and corruption wash right up to the doors of the Kremlin--while the man seen as the president’s main political rival jets to Washington for top-level meetings on loans that are critical to the nation’s future.

Yeltsin has been evincing increasing irritability toward his rival, Yevgeny M. Primakov, whom he was forced to accept as a compromise choice for prime minister last year. The jealousy boiled over publicly a week ago when the president dragged the prime minister before television cameras and dressed him down for handling the media poorly.

Today, Primakov is scheduled to arrive in the United States to bid for the International Monetary Fund loans that Russia desperately needs if it is to avoid a disastrous default on its international debt. If he pulls off his mission, he will return to Moscow a hero, forcing Yeltsin further into the shadows.

Even Primakov’s first stop on his trip has the potential to humiliate Yeltsin. He is scheduled to land at Shannon Airport in Ireland for a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, and Russian media are likely to recall a shaming 1994 incident when Yeltsin inexplicably failed to get off his plane for a similar meeting at Shannon with Ahern’s predecessor, Albert Reynolds.

Yeltsin, who left the hospital last week after prolonged treatment for a bleeding ulcer, is engulfed by tawdry political infighting. One newspaper reported over the weekend that his daughter and advisor, Tatyana Dyachenko, and a senior presidential staffer, Pavel P. Borodin, could soon be summoned for questioning by the prosecutor general, Yuri I. Skuratov, about corruption among Kremlin officials.

The leader of the liberal Yabloko faction in the lower house of parliament, Grigory A. Yavlinsky, said Sunday on Russian television that Yeltsin has to make some tough decisions to get rid of those who have brought discredit on the Kremlin.

“He must fire all those in the presidential staff and in the government who are accused of corruption,” Yavlinsky said.

Political analyst Andrei A. Piontkovsky of Moscow’s Independent Institute for Strategic Studies was even blunter, warning that Yeltsin’s only hope is to fire Dyachenko as a presidential advisor and Borodin as the manager of his administration.

Yeltsin was seriously weakened last week when the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, thwarted his attempt to get rid of Skuratov. Leonid A. Radzikhovsky, political columnist for the newspaper Sevodnya, said Sunday that Skuratov had edged too close to the Yeltsin family and associates in his investigation of allegations that Kremlin officials took bribes in return for awarding huge construction contracts to a Swiss company.

The battle over the prosecutor general hurt Yeltsin because it threw doubt on even his power to get rid of an official, but Primakov stayed at arm’s length from the scandal, which reached its lowest point when Russian television aired a videotape designed to discredit the prosecutor general by showing him cavorting in bed with two naked prostitutes.

Piontkovsky said Yeltsin should act firmly this week by firing Communist First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri D. Maslyukov, who is nominally in charge of the economy, and Deputy Prime Minister Gennady V. Kulik, whose Agrarian Party has close ties to the Communists. That would undermine Primakov’s cooperative relationship with parliament’s lower house, the Duma.

“With Primakov headed for Washington, it is the best time for Yeltsin to wage one of his last decisive political battles,” Piontkovsky said, though he doubted the president’s ability to prevail, arguing that he is now too isolated.

“Yeltsin’s best experts, advisors and specialists have left him or have been fired in the last couple of years. He has almost no royal guard to speak of now and no one at his side who can whisper a single bright or original idea into his ear,” he said.

Of late, the main barometer of Yeltsin’s health is the number of firings of government officials--with several having been cut down last week as the president’s health improved.

Commenting on the sackings, one of Yeltsin’s most outspoken rivals, presidential candidate and Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, said at a St. Petersburg meeting of his Fatherland movement Saturday that Russia was witnessing the beginning of a catastrophe.

“See what is happening at the highest echelons of power!” he said, shaking his fist for emphasis. “One official is chaotically replaced by another! Some kind of frenzied desire to fire somebody almost immediately after hiring him!”

The next chapter in Russia’s power intrigues may come today, when Swiss Atty. Gen. Carla del Ponte is expected to visit Moscow to meet with Skuratov, reportedly over the alleged bribes by Kremlin officials to the Swiss company.

In Washington, meanwhile, Primakov will tread a fine line as he tries to extract IMF loans at a time when U.S.-Russia relations are tense.

In his bid to prove Russia worthy of IMF support, Primakov recently pushed the Duma to move toward ratification of the 1993 START II treaty. But U.S. plans for a national ballistic missile defense shield are strongly opposed by Russia because of fears the system will breach the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and this could undermine progress on START II.

Primakov will need all his diplomatic skill to emerge without embarrassment, as the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners prepare for airstrikes on Yugoslavia over its failure to sign a deal to bring peace to the restive Serbian province of Kosovo. Russia strongly opposes any attack.

On the eve of his departure, Primakov said Monday that NATO airstrikes would have “an enormous destabilizing effect on the overall situation in Europe, not just on Yugoslavia and Kosovo. We are categorically opposed to the use of force in Yugoslavia and hope there will be no bombings.”