Gen Alexander Lebed, a contender for the Russian presidency, urged all parties yesterday to back acting prime minister, Mr Victor Chernomyrdin, and warned of chaos if parliament thwarted his attempts to govern.

Mr Lebed said that President Boris Yeltsin had "removed himself from running the country" and that power was now devolving towards parliament. "There is a small, very small chance to control things, so we must support him [Chernomyrdin]," Mr Lebed, a former Kremlin security adviser and now governor of Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, told reporters during a visit to the Duma, the lower house of parliament.

Mr Lebed, seen as a possible rival to Chernomyrdin in the bid to succeed President Yeltsin, described opposition threats in the Duma to block Yeltsin's nomination of Mr Chernomyrdin as prime minister as a policy of "the worse it is, the better for us".

"The situation is critical. Things are very nasty in the country," he added. Mr Lebed turned into an outspoken critic of Mr Yeltsin after the president ousted him from a top security post in the fall of 1996. He had accepted the post only months earlier as a reward for backing Yeltsin's re-election that June.

Asked by a journalist whether he though Yeltsin should voluntarily retire, Mr Lebed replied: "Without question."

Mr Lebed was among the first officials Mr Chernomyrdin met after his nomination last Sunday, five months after Mr Yeltsin dumped him in favour of the short-lived premiership of Mr Sergei Kiriyenko. Speaking yesterday, he warned that the Communist-led lower house must reach an accord with Mr Chernomyrdin or risk provoking popular unrest.

"I get the impression that the executive and the legislature are trying to sweep each other away," Mr Lebed said of Communist demands that Mr Chernomyrdin agree to transfer constitutional power from the president to parliament in return for its endorsement.

"If they fail to understand the situation in the country, both of them will be swept away," he said. Asked if he meant there could be a popular revolt, he said simply, "Yes."

"In many regions, the security forces, the executive powers and the people are all in the same foxhole," said the former paratroop commander, who has warned in the past that the army could mutiny and regions break free of Moscow due to the federal government's failure to meet its financial commitments to them.

However, Mr Lebed, who was dismissed by Mr Yeltsin two years ago amid talk of a coup plot, dismissed the possibility that anyone could take power in Moscow by force.

"That would be as crazy as in 1991," he said, referring to the failed hardline communist putsch in August that year.