Mikhail Gorbachev said Tuesday that, according to information he had received, Russia's Security Council discussed introducing a state of emergency in the country during a meeting last weekend.


Speaking at a press conference, - Gorbachev said that he had heard from reliable sources that the Security Council, a powerful body formed by President Boris Yeltsin during the summer, had talked over introducing emergency measures in order to consolidate government control.


"That is the greatest mistake", the former Soviet leader said of the rumored measures. "It will lead us to an abyss". He did not identify his sources.


Interfax and Russian television have reported that the meeting took place on Saturday, either in the Kremlin or at Staroye Ogaryovo, where Gorbachev also held emergency meetings when he was in power.


Yeltsin's press office has denied that the Security Council met on Saturday.


Gorbachev appeared at the news conference together with Konstantin Borovoi, a well-known entrepreneur who now leads his own Economic Freedom Party, and Vyacheslav Shostakovsky, a Gorbachev Foundation official and head of the Republican party.


They called the press conference to announce a conference on political conflict that the Gorbachev Foundation, the former leader's research institute, will sponsor in March. But Gorbachev quickly digressed from the topic of the day.


Denouncing the Security Council and a new Council of Russian Republics as "a move by the president toward political struggle", he urged Yeltsin to heed voices of opposition and warned him that Russians would take to the streets unless the president took quick action to salvage his reforms.


"He's caught in some kind of invisible snare and cannot escape from it", Gorbachev said. "He must escape and take decisions, fateful decisions for himself and the country".


On Monday, he said that Yeltsin should resign unless he heeded advice from "reformist circles". Among those voices he has urged Yeltsin to listen to is Civic Union, a centrist political bloc which he has endorsed and which is reported to have had growing influence of Yeltsin's government.


Although Gorbachev has refused to bow out completely from the political arena since stepping down in December, he said his appearance on Tuesday did not mean that he was making a comeback.


"For now, I do not want to create a party or be in the government", he said. "We are just starting to understand our role and image as a Foundation".