DAVOS, Switzerland -- Economics Minister Yevgeny Yasin said Monday that Moscow could consider pegging the battered ruble at a fixed rate once the country had achieved a degree of price and currency stability.


Yasin made clear, however, that any such move would not be a Soviet-style decree artificially exaggerating the ruble's actual worth, but a commitment to defending the currency with government and central bank reserves at a real market value.


And echoing First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, he told reporters at the Davos World Economic Forum that although the idea had been discussed there were no plans to fix the exchange rate in the immediate future.


"A standard blueprint for financial stabilization allows for using the possibility of fixing the ruble rate as a nominal anchor, as a factor that would help to stop inflation," said Yasin.


"But to ensure that such an instrument has an effect, it has to be used in specific conditions. Prime among these is a relative stabilization of prices and of the market rate of the ruble. And we don't have these yet."


Remarks by Chubais in Davos last Friday suggesting that a fixed rate could be set sent the troubled ruble tumbling to 4,019 against the dollar in Moscow. On Monday, it fell further to 4,034.


Russian sources said Chubais, heading Russia's delegation to the annual gathering of world business and political leaders, had been rebuked, and on Saturday he made clear there was no immediate prospect of such a move.


Market analysts in Davos said reaction to Chubais' original remarks appeared to have been based on a misunderstanding of what he had in mind.


In the old Soviet Union, the Kremlin fixed the rate of the then-unconvertible ruble against all foreign currencies. Western economists at the time estimated that the rate generally over-valued the ruble by some four times.