Former vice president Alexander Rutskoi, launching a broad-based opposition movement over the weekend, charged President Boris Yeltsin with preparing a secret decree to try to postpone presidential elections.


Rutskoi was speaking at the inauguration of the Russian nationalist organization Derzhava, or "Great Power," which he hopes will catapult him into the presidency. The occasion was designed to display the revival of his fortunes a year after he was released from Lefortovo prison, where he was jailed after the violence in Moscow in October 1993.


"We have information that the president's administration is preparing a nationwide referendum to prolong Yeltsin's powers for another four years," Rutskoi said Sunday, according to Interfax.


A Rutskoi aide, who asked not to be named, said Monday that the alleged five-point decree applied only to presidential elections and not to parliamentary elections.


"This decree might appear quite soon, but as far as we have the information, private information, this decree will not appear earlier than May 9," the aide said. "


Because, according to these same sources from the Kremlin, they said that this issue will be discussed with Mr. Clinton and there should be some guarantees, because you can easily imagine that Mr. [U.S. Secretary of State Warren] Christopher and some other guys from the Republican Party are strongly against it."


President Bill Clinton is due in Moscow next month for summit talks with Yeltsin. He will also attend celebrations on May 9 to mark the 50th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.


Both the presidents of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have used the device of a referendum recently to prolong their terms in office until the next century.


Asked about the alleged decree, a spokesman in the Kremlin press office, who also asked not to be named, said: "I can deny that. Rutskoi says he heard it in the Kremlin. Maybe he heard it in the Ryazan Kremlin, he did not hear it in the Moscow one."


Mark Urnov, head of Yeltsin's Analytical Center, and Georgy Satarov, the president's political aide, also both vigorously denied the existence of such a plan to Itar-Tass.


At his party congress, Rutskoi ruled out an alliance with the "nomenklatura leaders of the Communist Party," but welcomed the support of Russian nationalists like filmmaker Stanislav Govorukhin, who addressed the congress.


On Sunday, Rutskoi was adopted as the movement's presidential candidate with 885 votes in favor and one abstention. Andrei Fyodorov, Rutskoi's press secretary, said his boss was also planning to run in the parliamentary elections next December both as the leader of an electoral bloc and in a constituency in his home region of Kursk.


The movement claims one of the best grass-roots organizations in Russia. Fyodorov said from next month it would have 70 full-time paid workers and 62 provincial branches. It now has a newspaper, which, he said, would be enclosed in 60 local newspapers as a supplement.


Fyodorov said the ex-vice president had already toured 29 regions of Russia in the last year and "almost a million" people had signed up for Derzhava. Under a new draft law, a potential candidate needs 1.5 million signatures of support to run for the presidency.


Rutskoi stands in proud isolation from much of the rest of the nationalist opposition. On Monday he condemned ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky as a poodle of Defense Minister Pavel Grachev.


"That clown Zhirinovsky," Rutskoi said Monday. "You would simply have to invent him to make Grachev make him a colonel."


The former vice president also plays on his image as the underdog, who was turfed out of power by his bitter enemy, Yeltsin.


Rutskoi is still treated to low-level official harassment, which reinforces that image. Since leaving prison, he has been refused permission to leave Russia on the grounds that he is "the bearer of state secrets." Fyodorov said Rutskoi was hoping to have the ban overturned so he could go to Japan in May for the launch of his new book "Attaining Faith," which was released in Russia last week.


An oil painting on the book's cover depicts the author, bearded and dressed in a blue army greatcoat, standing against a stormy sky. Rutskoi's manifesto for the revival of "great power Russia," it castigates Yeltsin, the whole of the liberal wing of Russian politics and "enemies" in the West.