The Russian parliament has ordered President Boris Yeltsin to slow down the planned sale of state enterprises to the public, after only narrowly defeating a proposal to recall privatization vouchers altogether.


Parliament passed a resolution asking Yeltsin to extend the validity of the vouchers to three years from date of issue. Currently, the vouchers, which the government began distributing to each Russian citizen on Oct. 1, are due to expire in December 1993.


The resolution, which was passed on Friday, also instructed Yeltsin to guarantee that the check's value would not fall below their nominal sum of 10, 000 rubles.


After an appeal by Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov during a furious round of debates on Friday night, legislators voted down proposals from two pro-industry parliamentary factions which called for immediate recall of the vouchers.


"You dont really want everything to explode, do you? " Khasbulatov scolded deputies. "Think of the millions of people who have already received their checks".


The parliament's proposal to extend the validity of the vouchers could, by contrast, help to avoid conflict.


Grigory Yavlinsky, co-author of the 500-day plan which was drawn up and rejected in 1990 and is in charge of a model privatization program in Nizhny Novgorod, said in an interview published over the weekend that major enterprises would need at least a year to become joint-stock companies and that the voucher's validity should therefore be lengthened.