Spokesmen could give no estimates of how long the president would spend at the sanatorium at Barvikha, west of Moscow, but Itar-Tass reported that doctors would insist that Yeltsin remain for a "full course of treatment," likely to last from two weeks to one month. This would keep Yeltsin out of the public eye until after the parliamentary elections, scheduled for Dec. 17.
But Interfax reported that the president was considering a trip to Paris to sign the peace agreements on Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The peace documents are to be signed in early December by the leaders of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, as well as by the leaders of the five-nation contact group that helped to broker the peace agreement: Russia, the United States, Britain, France and Germany.
Citing informed sources in the Kremlin, Interfax reported that Yeltsin would travel only if his doctors gave him permission to do so.
"If the doctors have any doubts about Yeltsin's condition, the ceremony will be attended by Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, or, more likely, by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin," said the source.
Yeltsin spent more than a month in the hospital recovering from his second bout of heart trouble in four months.
He was stricken Oct. 26 with myocardial ischemia, a disease that restricts the flow of blood to the heart. This was the same ailment that put the president in the hospital in July.
Although initial reports claimed that Yeltsin's second attack was not as serious as the first, it has taken the president much longer to regain his strength.
In July, he spent a mere 13 days in the hospital, followed by two weeks at the Barvikha sanatorium, a sprawling complex that once served the party elite.
In television appearances in recent days, Yeltsin looked healthier than he has in several months, speaking clearly and energetically, and seeming once again in control.
Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin told Public Russian Television Sunday evening that Yeltsin was "in good physical shape, and is full of desire to finish what he has started," a reference to the possibility that Yeltsin plans to run for a second term in office. The Federation Council has set presidential elections for June 16, 1996.
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