Yeltsin heads to Spain amid health, leadership concerns
Yeltsin heads to Spain amid health, leadership concerns
MOSCOW (AFP): President Boris Yeltsin travels to Spain today for his first major trip abroad since the October uprising, hoping to dispel rumors of a waning hold on power and deteriorating health despite a scheduled visit to doctors in Barcelona.
Yeltsin will be the guest of King Juan Carlos during the three-day visit, the first by a Russian head of state since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was to hold talks with Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.
A major highlight of the trip will be a visit to Barcelona Hospital where Yeltsin was to meet with the team of doctors who treated him for a back injury sustained during an emergency helicopter landing during his last visit there in 1990.
The scheduled hospital visit came after Yeltsin dropped out of the public eye for most of February due to what the Kremlin described as a bad bout of the flu and for a two-week unannounced holiday in March in southern Russia.
Yeltsin spokesman Vyacheslav Kostikov said this week that Yeltsin wanted to visit the site of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and declined to say whether the visit would be for a medical check-up.
"I cannot say if the meeting (with the doctors in Barcelona) will be a consultation or a gesture of gratitude to them," Kostikov said.
During talks with the Spanish monarch and Gonzalez, Yeltsin was to discuss Russia's new assertive foreign policy launched in the wake of the strong showing by ultranationalists in the December parliamentary elections.
Russia has stepped up its diplomatic efforts to reach a peace agreement in the former Yugoslavia -- where Spain has deployed a contingent of troops under the UN Protection Force -- and to implement the Palestinian autonomy agreement in the Middle East.
Beyond the diplomatic talks, the visit itself was to underscore abroad that Yeltsin remains firmly at the helm and is confident enough to leave Moscow for three days despite growing attacks from his rivals.
The release from prison last February of the ringleaders of the failed October coup attempt has undermined Yeltsin's authority and his attempts to establish a strong leadership within the framework of his new constitution.
Former vice-president Alexander Rutskoi, who led the rebellion from within the besieged parliamentary White House, last month joined conservatives and communists in parliament to launch a new movement called "Accord for Russia", widely viewed as the opposition powerbase for the next presidential election.
The opposition movement has rejected Yeltsin's proposal to sign an agreement on civic accord which the Russian leader said would consolidate stability in Russia following the October violence.