The general many Russians see as their next head of state has little but contempt for what President Boris Yeltsin has done for Russia but is ready to promise him an undisturbed retirement.


"I am ready to let him go peacefully, to go fishing and grow strawberries. No problem, I am not bloodthirsty," Alexander Lebed said without a flicker of a smile.


Lebed, a master of pithy barracks language, described his former commander, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, as a "prostitute" and his nationalist rival Alexander Rutskoi as a "political corpse."


In an interview with Reuters in his Moscow office, the 45-year-old general was barely more complimentary about Yeltsin, technically still his commander in chief, although Lebed resigned from active service in July to go into politics.


Asked whether Yeltsin had any positive achievements in more than four years ruling Russia, Lebed paused to think. "Glasnost -- and I say that with serious reservations," he replied.


"I cannot see him as a hero who smashed the system. It rotted away from inside and collapsed on its own. But in order to save hundreds, perhaps millions of lives, I am prepared to give a personal guarantee to the president that not a hair of his head will be harmed."


Lebed's image as an incorruptible soldier and outspoken rebel make him a powerful asset to the Congress of Russian Communities, a nationalist bloc which has made him its No. 2 candidate in elections to the Duma on Dec. 17.


For now, he refuses to discuss running for president next June, although in the past he has said he will do so if he finds favor with the voters in December.


Lebed said he believed there was no alternative to a strong presidency in Russia, because monarchy could not be revived and rule by parliament was nothing more than "bedlam."


But he called for reform of Yeltsin's 1993 constitution, which he said reduced parliament and other bodies such as the Constitutional Court to mere decoration. "They are just Potemkin villages," he said, referring to fake settlements in 18th-century Russia designed to impress Empress Catherine the Great.


Asked for his opinion of his fellow-paratrooper Grachev, Lebed growled: "I don't like prostitutes, whether they are wearing a skirt or trousers."


Grachev, he said, had prostituted himself by balancing between the two sides in an August 1991 Moscow coup, finally coming down on Yeltsin's side. Lebed said he believed Russia's army would have to continue playing a big role in politics. "In civilized countries, the army does not stick its nose into politics, it gets on with its job. But you can't yet count our country among the civilized ones."


He said he wanted a genuine reform of the demoralized armed services, which would cut their numbers to around 1.5 million and put them on a professional basis.


He sharply attacked plans to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, saying "a kind of buffer zone" was essential between Russia and the Western alliance.


NATO, he said, was behaving like "a big drunken hooligan in a kindergarten who says he will hit anyone he likes." Its expansion eastward to include countries such as Poland would force Russia to form its own military bloc and denounce treaties and agreements with the West.


Lebed, despite hardline views on other issues, made clear he remained a harsh critic of Russia's bungled war in Chechnya and asked why the West failed to protest more strongly about it.


"Everybody looked the other way and just kept quiet," he said, comparing the West's mild reaction to thousands of deaths in Chechnya to its tough protests over Soviet internal security crackdowns in Georgia and Lithuania during 1989 to 1991, which had killed a total of about 20 people. "It's a double standard."


Lebed said he had no real differences of views with most of the other generals and ex-generals running for seats in the Duma on other party lists. But he denounced Rutskoi, the former Russian vice president, as a "half-Napoleon, half-Caesar." He said Rutskoi, who is running for the Duma and probably the presidency at the head of his own Derzhava movement, was now a "political corpse" after promising to bring back the Stalinist system of slave labor camps.


Lebed, who sent a chill down the spines of Russian liberals a year ago with an interview praising General Augusto Pinochet for leading a coup in Chile in 1973, picked a more moderate role model this time.


"I think from Western history my model is de Gaulle, who restored France from the ruins," he said.