Yeltsin recovering, no surgery needed

Earlier, the Kremlin’s chief doctor Sergei Mironov said the president would not be able to travel abroad for three months.

Participating in Russian NTV’s `Hero of the Day’ programme, Mironov said Yeltsin had lost half a litre of blood because of his stomach ulcer.

The bleeding had stopped but Yeltsin was likely to remain in hospital for about three weeks, he said.

The Russian president was taken on Sunday to the elite Central Clinical Hospital where he is being treated by a team of doctors.

Stress was a possiblecause of the ulcer, Mironov said.

A similar opinion was expressed by Renat Akchurin in an interview with the state-controlled ORT television station. Akchurin operated on Yeltsin’s heart in 1996.

Yeltsin’s trip to Paris scheduled for January 27 has been postponed to mid-March, the Kremlin press service said on Tuesday.

Last year, the president cancelled his trip to Austria, Malaysia and India after falling ill in October during a visit to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The Paris visit was to be his first foreign trip this year.

Yeltsin also phoned Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov to ask about the discussion on the 1999 budget in the State Duma.

Speaking to journalists before flying to Kazakhstan on the invitation of re-elected President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Primakov said, “I am flying with a light heart. As head of the government, I would not leave Moscow if I knew my stay here was necessary in connection with the treatment of the President.”

Yeltsin has not shown up in his Kremlin office since theNew Year. He has been hospitalised five times since his re-election in 1996.