Russia's embattled foreign minister responded to a barrage of criticism from his president by saying he would stay in his job only if he was not treated as a servant.


"If people are needed who can be talked down to ... then it would really be better to look for a new team," Andrei Kozyrev told Russian television's "Podrobnosti" program Wednesday.


Kozyrev said President Boris Yeltsin had been wrong to criticize his ministry's work before the world's media on the eve of a crucial trip to France and the United States.


"I repeat that I do not think we should have sorted out our relationship in public ... when we had extremely complex negotiations ahead of us," Kozyrev said, clearly offended at Yeltsin's remark that he needed a deputy to help him do his job.


The president had said just days before that Kozyrev should be replaced, but on the eve of the trip, which included talks with President Bill Clinton on how to solve the crisis in former Yugoslavia, he appeared to change his mind.


Kozyrev did not rule out the possibility that he might resign and seemed at pains to make clear he would only stay at the ministry if Yeltsin treated him as a co-worker.


"If the [political] course remains the same, and if the character of the relationship, its tone, is exactly that of a partnership, and not master and servants ... and it remains so [a partnership], then we have every possibility of continuing our work together," Kozyrev said.