Yeltsin

WASHINGTON -- Senior Clinton administration officials said yesterday that they were troubled by President Boris N. Yeltsin's decision to fire the reformist Russian government so close to the summit meeting with President Clinton next week in Moscow. But a spokesman said Clinton had decided to go ahead with his trip.Clinton administration officials acknowledged that they were surprised by Yeltsin's move, which also reinstated former Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. Five months ago, Yeltsin dismissed Chernomyrdin and installed Sergei V. Kiriyenko as prime minister with a Cabinet of economic reformers with no discernible political constituency.

MOSCOW -- Anatoly Kuntsevich, the retired army general assigned to abolish Russia's chemical and biological warfare programs but lately accused of working to prolong them, was dismissed from his post yesterday.A one-sentence Kremlin announcement said only that President Boris N. Yeltsin fired Mr. Kuntsevich for "numerous and gross violations" of his duties as chairman of Mr. Yeltsin's Committee on Problems of Chemical and Biological Disarmament.Mr. Yeltsin had come under criticism at home and in the West for allowing Mr. Kuntsevich, a soldier-scientist who once ran the Soviet chemical weapons-making complex, to oversee the destruction of his own empire -- tens of thousands of tons of poisonous nerve gas and mustard gas stored at seven heavily guarded sites across Russia.

MOSCOW -- Prodded by President Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian Constitutional Court agreed yesterday to hand back Mikhail S. Gorbachev's confiscated passport so that the former Soviet leader may attend a state funeral in Germany.It was the most encouraging sign yet that the two men have reached an understanding breaking the internationally embarrassing deadlock caused by Mr. Gorbachev's refusal to appear in a case involving the Communist Party's past.Court Chairman Valery Zokerin announced that the court's summons to Mr. Gorbachev, Soviet Communist Party general secretary from 1985 to 1991, was still in force.

MOSCOW -- An angry and disdainful Boris N. Yeltsin, raisin the specter of a "creeping coup" against him, said yesterday that he could no longer work with Russia's Communist-dominated Congress and called for a referendum to let the Russian people choose between him and the legislature.Stung by rejection and defeat over the last several days at the hands of his conservative foes in the Congress, the Russian president strode into its Kremlin hall at 10 a.m. yesterday and promptly brought on Russia's most serious political crisis since the failed coup of August 1991.

MOSCOW -- Russian leader Boris N. Yeltsin said yesterday that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had accepted in principle his proposal for a coalition government including representatives of the Russian Federation and other republics.But Vitaly Ignatenko, spokesman for Mr. Gorbachev, said the Soviet president had no plans to ask for the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov. Apparently, Mr. Gorbachev foresees a coalition government's taking shape not immediately but in the long run, as part of a reorganization of the Soviet Union under a new treaty to be signed by the republics on a voluntary basis.

WASHINGTON -- As if the strains between Washington and Moscow were not already severe, the problems are being intensified by a new development: the Bill Clinton-Boris N. Yeltsin relationship no longer wins political points at home for either man.For much of his first two years as president, Mr. Clinton won approval for his handling of Russia, even from harsh critics of his leadership on other foreign problems. The president consistently supported Russian reformers and worked closely with Mr. Yeltsin as Russia's elected leader.

MOSCOW -- Making clear its intention to continue an offensive in Chechnya despite domestic or foreign criticism, Russia's National Security Council met here yesterday as the army unleashed its most powerful artillery barrage yet on the capital of the secessionist southern region.As Russian forces pummeled the rebel capital with shells from artillery positioned in several nearby villages, President Boris N. Yeltsin vowed yet again to rein in the furious attack.But Mr. Yeltsin appeared to veer between peace initiatives and heightened bellicosity.

MOSCOW -- Fifteen men went behind closed door yesterday, did some hard bargaining for several long hours, and emerged with a compromise that averts, for now at least, the climactic power struggle that was threatening Russia.They then promptly rammed it through the Congress of People's Deputies without amendment and without discussion."Russia was robbed!" exclaimed Ilya Konstantinov, one of the leaders of the hard-line conservative National Salvation Front.But he and his allies had been cut out of the deal-making, and there was little they could do about it.President Boris N. Yeltsin gave up his idea of a referendum in which the Russian people could choose between him or the legislature.

UNITED NATIONS -- Russia's foreign minister told President Clinton yesterday that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin would resort to violence only if provoked and had no intention of storming the parliament building."

MOSCOW -- Today the fight picks up again.President Boris N. Yeltsin and the hostile and unpredictable Congress of People's Deputies are heading for another wrangle, each hoping to win the fight for power that broke off after a protracted and inconclusive session of the Congress in December.Once more, Mr. Yeltsin's government and his reform program are on the line to a degree that has President Clinton and other world leaders greatly concerned. Once more, conservatives in the Communist-dominated legislature are seeking to strip him of his authority.