A Moscow court Wednesday began considering Russia's first libel suit against its head of state, President Boris Yeltsin, but adjourned for three weeks to obtain further evidence.


Iona Andronov, a hard line opposition politician, is suing Yeltsin for $300,000 plus 500 million rubles ($166,390) for calling him a fascist in the English-language version of his recently published memoirs.


"I would like to confiscate the president's profits from the book and hand them over to the families of victims of last year's bloodshed," Andronov said at the session in the Kuntsevo district court in western Moscow.


No presidential representative turned up for Tuesday's session, but in a letter delivered to the court that day Yeltsin said the word "fascist" was a translation error. Andronov quoted a letter from the translator of the North American version of the book, who insisted her translation was accurate.