President Boris Yeltsin said Tuesday that he intended to outlaw the National Salvation Front, a new hardline group dedicated to the Russian leader's removal from office.


"The front calls for the overthrow of the lawful authorities, destabilizes society and sets people against each other", Yeltsin declared at a meeting with top Foreign Ministry officials, according to Itar-Tass.


"This is impermissible and urgent measures must be taken without further ado".


News of the prohibition came amid other signs of a growing crisis mentality inside the Kremlin in response to a rise in organized opposition to Yeltsin from parliament.


Russia's Security Ministry, the successor to the KGB, issued a statement Tuesday expressing concern at the crisis in the economy and the appearance of unconstitutional bodies that "threaten to destroy the reviving Russian statehood", according to Interfax.


Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president, told a press conference Tuesday he had information that Yeltsin had discussed introducing a state of emergency in Russia at a meeting of his Security Council on the weekend.


The president's press office confirmed Tuesday that Yeltsin would sign a decree outlawing the National Salvation Front, a coalition of nationalists and pro-Communists, but said that the decree was not yet drafted.


Yeltsin asked the Foreign Ministry to explain the need for the ban to Western governments.


"It is a great danger, but they still don't understand it in the West", he declared.


Last weekend the front held its inaugural congress, where leaders pledged to strive for the resignations of both Yeltsin and his government.


"Yeltsin's statement looks like a threat to stop the wave of people supporting us", Vladimir Shchmakov, deputy chairman of the Party of National Salvation, which is a member of the front, said Tuesday. "He sees the danger that the front poses to him".


A statement released by the front's executive council said that Yeltsin's decree would breach the Russian Constitution and international law.


If Yeltsin carries through with his threat it would be the first time he has outlawed part of his political opposition since he banned the former Communist Party in the aftermath of the failed coup of August 1991.


The legality of that order is still being considered by the Constitutional Court, Russia's highest judicial authority.


Reports of Yeltsin's ban on the National Salvation Front coincided with news that parliament had passed a new law punishing any attempt at the "violent overthrow" of Russia's constitutional organs.


The law would not appear to apply to the front, whose leaders -- whatever their ultimate intentions -- have been careful to call for Yeltsin's removal by vote when the Congress of People's Deputies convenes on Dec. 1.


Several legislators said in telephone interviews that they believed Yeltsin's decree would be constitutional only if it was sent to the Constitutional Court, which could decide whether the front had called for the president's "violent overthrow".


Otherwise, "this will discredit the authorities", said Yevgeny Malkin, deputy chairman of, the Democratic Party of Russia. "It will make the front into martyrs".


Malkin's party is a member of Civic Union, an influential umbrella group for centrist opposition to the government's reform programs, but quite separate from the front.


The movements such as Fatherland and Communists of Russia that make up the new hardline coalition are still relatively marginal. An opinion poll reported on Russian television after the front's weekend conference estimated nationwide support for them at 15 percent.


The ban comes at a time when the political atmosphere in Moscow has overheated in anticipation of the winter session of the Congress of People's Deputies.


"The situation has grown grave sharply in connection with parliament's decision to convene the next Congress in December", Yeltsin told the Foreign Ministry meeting, according to Itar-Tass. He added that he was trying to "rebuff this attack by the irreconcilable opposition and defend reforms".


At his meeting in the Foreign Ministry, Yeltsin also took a hard line on Russia's relations with the former Soviet republics, criticizing the ministry for timidity born of an inverse "imperial syndrome", according to Itar-Tass.


Yeltsin asked the ministry, to produce a well thought-out policy for relations with other Commonwealth members that would protect Russia's borders, and to accelerate its efforts to protect Russians living outside the republic from persecution.