PRESIDENT Yeltsin said yesterday a treaty on Russia's relations with NATO was "98 per cent" ready and he might join talks in Moscow next week to try to finalise the deal.
"About 98 per cent of the document is ready," Mr Yeltsin said after laying a wreath at Moscow's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the eve of the anniversary marking the end of the second World War.
But Mr Yeltsin, fiercely opposed to NATO's plans to admit new members from the former Warsaw Pact, admitted talks with NATO were tough. "There has probably not been such an acute issue between Russia and the USA and NATO since the Cuban crisis," he said, referring to the 1962 stand-off over Soviet missile bases.
Mr Yeltsin said he wanted the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, and NATO's Secretary General, Mr Javier Solana, to sort out the remaining differences at their next meeting in Moscow next Tuesday to enable the document to be signed before NATO's Madrid summit in July.
On the fringes of the wreath-laying ceremony, the far-right nationalist politician, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, scuffled with two television reporters after he was denied access to the commemoration.
Earlier, Mr Yeltsin inaugurated the rebuilding programme for an ancient church named after his patron saint. Patriarch Alexiy of the Russian Orthodox Church blessed the foundation stone of the Church of St Boris and St Gleb, originally built in the 15th century but pulled down in 1930 as a part of Stalin's anti-religion campaign.
St Boris and St Gleb were the first Russian saints canonised by the Orthodox Church. "Christ is risen!" Mr Yeltsin told onlookers in the rain, using a traditional Orthodox Easter greeting.