Time to go, Yeltsin declares

By FRED WEIR

Herald correspondent and AP

MOSCOW - The perennially unpredictable Boris Yeltsin astounded the world one last time last night by announcing his early retirement from the Kremlin to make way for his anointed successor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"I am going. I am going earlier than my established time," Yeltsin said in an unscheduled live television appearance.

His announcement caught Russia by surprise, and is likely to launch the country into yet another political crisis as parties scramble for position.

Looking pale and grim in his television speech, Yeltsin said: "Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I resign."

The resignation appeared timed to capitalise on the success of pro-Kremlin, centrist parties in parliamentary elections. Parties backing Putin scored unexpectedly well, adding to the drive to put him into the Kremlin as Yeltsin's successor.

Under the Russian constitution, presidential elections must be held within 90 days of the President's resignation.

The resignation came into effect immediately, Yeltsin said. Putin will act as President until elections on March 26, giving him an even bigger advantage in the race for the presidency.

The Kremlin later added that Yeltsin would formally hand power to the Prime Minister on January 5.

Putin, a virtual unknown tapped for the Prime Minister's job barely five months ago, has risen to unprecedented public approval levels and appears fully in charge of Russia's Government, military and security apparatus.

"This is a well-prepared manoeuvre, which will put Putin directly into the presidency if it works," said Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the independent Centre for Strategic Studies in Moscow.

"What a New Year's present Putin has received! Six month ago he was head of the security services, with no hopes or claims to higher power.

"Yeltsin took him, the Kremlin moulded him, and now he has been virtually handed state power on a platter. There remains only the small detail of getting elected."

Yeltsin's explanation for his resignation offered little clarity. Russia's leader for almost a decade, and undisputed successor to the power of the Soviet Union which collapsed almost exactly eight years ago, Yeltsin is famous for never conceding a scrap of his authority.

A former personal secretary, Vyachislav Kostikov, once wrote that "power is Yeltsin's mistress, his only love."

But as Yeltsin's term waned, the problem of ensuring an orderly succession of Kremlin power to a like-minded heir has grown acute. Last year corruption scandals touched the Yeltsin family, and there were dire warnings that the Kremlin inner circle might be blamed - or even prosecuted - if an unsympathetic person came to power.

Yeltsin's attempts to build a market economy were deeply flawed by corruption and incompetence, and he became widely disliked by most Russians.

Plagued for years by heart and other health problems, Yeltsin, aged 68, has largely been out of sight during his second term.

But he continued to dominate Russian politics despite his ill health. He easily defeated a Communist-led effort in May to impeach him and has dismissed four Prime Ministers in the past two years.

"I understand that I must [step down]," he said last night. "Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new intelligent, strong, energetic people, and we who have been in power for many years must go."

Although Yeltsin has been unpopular for years, he won a second term in 1996, easily defeating Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. The majority of Russians decided they would prefer Yeltsin's scandal-tinged Administration to any attempt to return to the Soviet past.

Yeltsin also appealed to Russians to forgive him for what he said had been the errors of his Administration.

It was a highly unusual admission from a leader who rarely admitted mistakes and always insisted that his policies were correct.

"I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes."

Yeltsin said he saw no point in staying in power for the last six months of his term because Putin was well-suited to take over. He was confident that Russia would not return to its authoritarian past and would develop as a modern democratic nation.