President Yeltsin defied his doctors to attend the funeral of King Hussein, but the surprise move appeared to backfire as a visibly unfit Russian leader was forced to cut short the trip.
The ailing Kremlin chief, warned by his doctors not to fly for three months because of a large stomach ulcer, spent barely six hours in Jordan attending official ceremonies along with a host of world leaders.
Mr Yeltsin was the only major international figure not seen on television paying his last respects to King Hussein.
Jordanian officials later said Mr Yeltsin had paid his last respects ahead of the other dignitaries, a departure from protocol for which Mr Yeltsin expressed his "personal gratitude" to King Abdullah, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
Throughout the snap visit, his first abroad in four months, Mr Yeltsin appeared robot-like, and a posse of aides escorted him closely up the steps to the Raghadan palace where King Hussein's body lay in state.
Even on arrival, Mr Yeltsin had needed a supporting arm from his wife, Naina, as he gingerly descended the steps of his official plane.
However, the presidential press service in Moscow denied reports that Mr Yeltsin had received urgent medical treatment during his brief stay in Amman.
A Clinton spokesman, Mr P.J. Crowley, praised Mr Yeltsin's gesture in attending the funeral even though it was clear he was "recovering" from his ulcer.
Mr Yeltsin, who has put in less than 10 hours work at the Kremlin so far this year, has not left Russia since mid-October when he was forced to curtail a trip to central Asia after all but collapsing in public in Uzbekistan.
Aides said the president was suffering from mental and physical exhaustion, which forced him to take several weeks off work.
Ill-health has forced Mr Yeltsin to scrap four planned foreign trips since then, and forced him to host a November mini-summit with visiting Chinese leader, Mr Jiang Zemin, in hospital where he was recovering from pneumonia.
Poor health has been a constant theme of Mr Yeltsin's second term, the president undergoing a quintuple heart bypass operation in November 1996 barely five months after securing a second mandate.
Aides admitted last year that Mr Yeltsin had suffered a string of heart attacks during a gruelling re-election campaign. His political authority was further battered by the Russian financial crisis last August.
"He is trying to show Yeltsin the robust and energetic leader, Yeltsin the international statesman. In a word, the old Yeltsin," said Mr Dmitry Trenin, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow.
A Western diplomat said politics rather than protocol had dictated Mr Yeltsin's motives for making the risky day trip by air.
"He was not close to King Hussein," the diplomat said. "It's to show he is still a force to be reckoned with."
At 68, heart and other ailments have taken their toll on Mr Yeltsin. His illnesses, the latest of which was a bleeding stomach ulcer, have limited Mr Yeltsin to three appearances at the Kremlin this year and his only travel until now had been between his office, country residences near Moscow and hospital.
Forced by parliament to abandon efforts to reinstall an old ally as prime minister last September, Mr Yeltsin nominated Mr Yevgeny Primakov in a compromise move and has been largely on the sidelines ever since.
His decision to travel meant he stole the limelight from Mr Primakov, who had been expected to represent Russia.
The trip also offered him the chance to reaffirm Russia's role, however peripheral, in the Middle East peace process and possibly to have talks with President Clinton on Russia's chances of winning international credits.
"Clearly he wants primarily to show he is alive, but this trip also gives Russia a chance to keep its foot in the door in the Middle East peace process," said Mr Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian Science Foundation.