Yeltsin Skipping G-7 Summit to Focus on Runoff

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin on Wednesday decided to skip the summit of world leaders in France next week to focus on winning the runoff in Russia’s hotly contested presidential race.

Yeltsin made the announcement just three days after narrowly outpacing Communist candidate Gennady A. Zyuganov in the first round of the Russian election.

“The fate of Russia is being decided. . . ,” Yeltsin said. “I should go to Lyons, but it is more important [for me] to be here.”

The leaders of the Group of 7 top industrial nations have made clear their support for Yeltsin’s reelection bid, and he was virtually assured a warm welcome in Lyons. But given how critical the next two weeks are to Yeltsin’s--and the country’s--future, the trip might have been perceived as a slight to voters, Russian political analysts said.

In a move expected to improve Yeltsin’s chances in the presidential contest, Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin declared July 3 a national holiday, setting the stage for the Central Election Commission to designate that Wednesday for the rematch. Yeltsin’s team believes that a midweek date, rather than the customary Sunday, will increase voter turnout and benefit the president.

Zyuganov told reporters he would agree to the midweek date.

Speaking to reporters in the Kremlin after announcing the cancellation of his trip to the annual G-7 summit, Yeltsin said he will continue to woo those who cast ballots for other candidates in Sunday’s voting. On Tuesday, he gave the third-place finisher, Alexander I. Lebed, a senior position in his government.

The fourth-place candidate, pro-reform economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky, has yet to directly endorse the president, but Georgi A. Satarov, Yeltsin’s chief political advisor, said Wednesday that an alliance with him is possible. Eye surgeon Svyatoslav N. Fyodorov, one of the candidates who captured less than 1% of the vote, endorsed Yeltsin on Wednesday.

Ultranationalist candidate Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, who placed fifth, predicted Wednesday that his backers will not vote for Zyuganov. “There’s no way they will go to the Communists in the second round,” he said. “They’re my voters, and they’ll vote as I tell them.”

Commenting on Yeltsin’s decision not to go to Lyons, U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said it was “completely understandable.”

Russian analysts said the decision was natural.

“For Russian voters, the trip to the G-7 summit means nothing,” said Viktor I. Borisyuk, a political advisor at the Presidential Analytical Center. “To leave the country on the eve of the elections would be stupid.”

One of the most frequent complaints about former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who became very unpopular in his last years in power, was that he spent all his time traveling abroad while his country was falling apart.

“Yeltsin remembers Gorbachev, whose frequent trips abroad caused nothing but indignation among most Russians,” said Anatoly Utkin, chief of the foreign policy department of the prestigious USA-Canada Institute and a prominent foreign policy advisor for reform-minded Russian politicians. Despite Yeltsin’s consistent lobbying, Russia has not been invited to join the G-7, which is composed of the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.

Yeltsin has attended the group’s meetings in recent years, but his receptions have been spotty. Last summer in Halifax, Canada, the G-7 members rebuked Yeltsin to his face for the war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya and told him to put an end to the conflict.

But when Russia hosted a special meeting of the group in April, the world leaders were expected to crack down on Yeltsin for nuclear safety problems; instead, the event turned into a virtual pep rally for the Kremlin leader.