Yeltsin Resting After Treatment for Infection

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin will need at least a week to recuperate from a viral infection and acute bronchitis, the Kremlin said Thursday after announcing the leader’s 10th illness since his 1996 reelection.

The president went to the Central Clinical Hospital after a morning meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. He received brief treatment, after which he left for Gorky-9, his residence in the woods west of Moscow, spokesman Dmitri D. Yakushkin said.

Although some of Yeltsin’s health maladies over the last four years have been severe--including a quintuple-bypass heart operation in late 1996--the doctors’ decision to send him home Thursday suggested that the current illness is relatively mild.

But Yeltsin’s condition was serious enough to force him to cancel several planned meetings with foreign dignitaries, including Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko, who was to come to Moscow today to sign a union treaty between Russia and Belarus.

Putin asked Lukashenko to delay his trip until next month, the news agency Itar-Tass said, citing Putin spokesman Mikhail Y. Kozhukhov.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is to begin a three-day trip to Moscow on Monday, but apparently he will not meet Yeltsin. The president won’t meet visitors until Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma arrives Dec. 6, the Interfax news agency reported, citing Kremlin sources.

Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff, Igor V. Shabdurasulov, said full recuperation would take “from a week to two,” Interfax reported.

Yeltsin, 68, has suffered from respiratory infections often, particularly in the winter. He also has had a bleeding ulcer, double pneumonia and unstable blood pressure. Last month he was hospitalized briefly with the flu and a fever.

Yeltsin had looked relatively healthy in recent days. He seemed particularly energized last week in Istanbul, Turkey, where he staunchly defended Russia’s military offensive in Chechnya at a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.