President Boris Yeltsin on Wednesday outlawed the Russian parliament's controversial special police force, just one day after the guards had taken up positions at one of Russia's most respected daily newspapers.


Yeltsin denounced the 5, 000-man force, which guards the Russian parliament as well as 75 other official buildings, as an "illegal armed unit". He ordered his interior minister, Viktor Yerin, to dissolve the group and to replace it with militia under the government's control, according to Interfax.


But members of parliament and the police force said that Yeltsin's decree carried no weight and that the fate of the guards was up to parliament itself.


Meanwhile, parliament guards posted on Tuesday at the editorial offices of Izvestia had been removed by Wednesday morning and replaced with regular police.


They left at midnight following a heated discussion with Interior Ministry police, according to deputy editor Vladimir Nadein.


'' The presidential order also came one day after Yeltsin promised to ban the National Salvation Front, a new hardline bloc that has called for the overthrow of the president and his reform government. That announcement came amid other signs of a growing crisis mentality inside the Kremlin.


Although the actions were not related, they both reflected the president's reaction toward mounting opposition as the convening of the Dec. 1 Congress of People's Deputies, Russia's highest legislature, nears. The Congress is expected to present Yeltsin his toughest challenge yet.


The parliamentary police force, known officially as the Guard of the Supreme Bodies of Power, came under the direct control of parliament speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, who is often a blunt and outspoken critic of the government.


Created by secret decree following the August 1991 coup, the guards are often accused by the speaker's opponents of being his private army.


They became known to the public only after two incidents of clashes with the Moscow city police over the past week, one of which ended with two guards being shot.


"They are definitely an outrage", Alexander Orfyonov, a spokesman for Yeltsin, said on Wednesday of the president's reasons for the order.


Parliament's defense and security committee is preparing legislation for the regulation of the force, Sergei Stepashin, the committee chairman, told Itar-Tass.


The guard received no notice of the ban Wednesday and a deputy, Taras Karavansky, said it would take orders only from parliament.


The question of who controls Izvestia has figured prominently in the battle between Yeltsin and parliament since April, when conservative legislators, with Khasbulatov supporting them, moved to take over the publishing house of the liberal daily.


Parliament argued Izvestia belonged to it as heirs of the former Soviet legislature, which ran the publishing house before it became independent following the failed August 1991 coup.


The battle over Izvestia appeared to have subsided - at least temporarily - on Wednesday, with the guards gone. But Nadein said the paper still had a long way to go to remove itself from its tangle with parliament.