The leader of Russia's Communists said his party would boycott any further debate on President Yeltsin's candidate for prime minister, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, who was rejected by parliament yesterday.
"We considered Kiriyenko and we voted. The State Duma [lower house of parliament] has made a decision on him and we are not returning to this issue again," Mr Gennady Zyuganov said. Mr Zyuganov also angrily slammed Mr Yeltsin's decision to renominate his protege saying it was "political idiocy" and "petty tyranny".
Mr Yeltsin stunned the nation last month when he sacked his entire cabinet and named the youthful, little-known technocrat as Prime Minister-designate. Under the constitution the President must dissolve parliament and call an early election if it rejects his candidate three times.
"I have no other candidate," Mr Yeltsin said in his morning radio address. He sent a letter to the chamber renominating Mr Kiriyenko (35) soon after the vote, which means a second ballot next week.
"He (Yeltsin) keeps pressing on," Mr Zyuganov said. "In 1991 he helped to ruin the country, in 1993 he drowned Moscow in blood, two years later he flooded Chechnya with blood, and now he again barges straight on, regardless of any obstacles."
Mr Zyuganov referred to the disbanding of the Soviet Union in 1991, the events in Moscow in 1993 when Mr Yeltsin sent tanks to crush a Communist-led revolt, and Russia's two-year war with Chechnya in which tens of thousands of people were killed.
In spite of Mr Zyuganov's remarks, another influential Communist deputy, Mr Vladimir Semago, said Mr Kiriyenko would be approved on the second vote.
Meanwhile, Mr Kiriyenko denied yesterday he had ever had any contact with the US-based Church of Scientology.
Scientology has been the focus of controversy in many countries. A deputy had asked Mr Kiriyenko about media reports that the former energy minister had attended a course sponsored by an organisation with links to the Church of Scientology.
"Speaking frankly I don't even have a clear idea what it is, never having had any contacts with them," he said.