Yeltsin Poised for Return to Job, Aide Says

MOSCOW — Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin is ready to return to work, his spokesman said Saturday, nearly two weeks after the president was hospitalized with pneumonia.

What spokesman Dmitri D. Yakushkin didn’t say, however, was exactly when Yeltsin will return.

Since his hospitalization Nov. 22, Yeltsin has hovered in the deep background of Russia’s political discourse, largely unseen and unheard. His place at the center of national affairs has been taken by his prime minister, Yevgeny M. Primakov.

Yakushkin, speaking on the Echo of Moscow radio station, declined to say when the president would leave the hospital.

Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff, Oleg N. Sysuyev, told Reuters on Friday that Yeltsin would be back at work in the Kremlin on Monday.

In announcing Yeltsin’s imminent return, Yakushkin tried to restore some luster to the president’s image, depicting him as an active, well-connected executive even from his hospital bed--an image few Russians are likely to believe anymore.

Many have urged Yeltsin’s resignation, but the president has remained adamant that he will remain in office until the end of his term in 2000.

Meanwhile, Primakov promised the head of Russia’s lower house of parliament Saturday that the Cabinet would present its already delayed draft budget for 1999 to the chamber Friday.

The budget, being drawn up with the country mired in economic crisis, is expected to be a litmus test for the International Monetary Fund to judge whether Russia should receive new credits.

Primakov previously has said that the budget would have to include unspecified measures to cushion the blows suffered by the economic setbacks.