PRESIDENT Yeltsin was in fighting form yesterday for this week's summit with the US President, lashing out at Washington's policies and teasing Mr Clinton over his recent fall.
With an eye to his domestic critics, Mr Yeltsin (66) raised the spectre of a return to the Cold War, saying US Russian relations had to be equal and Russian diplomats could offer no more concessions to their US counterparts.
On a lighter note and with evident relish at his own recovery from months of heart problems, the Russian leader said he had foiled predictions that he would be the sick man at the summit in the Finnish capital, Helsinki.
"They said that a sick Yeltsin and a healthy Clinton would come to Helsinki and it turns out the other way around," he said in an interview with Russian, American and Finnish television reporters.
Mr Yeltsin is under strong pressure from nationalist and communist foes not to be seen to take a soft line with Mr Clinton over NATO's plans to expand eastwards - a topic which is expected to dominate the summit starting on Thursdays.
"I don't want a return to the Cold War, I don't want it and our people don't want it, but for that there must be equal conditions in the world order," he said.
Mr Yeltsin said Russia, which argues that NATO expansion threatens its security, was not worried about a possible attack, but about economic and strategic isolation.
"I'm not worried that NATO will attack, Russia would simply hit back," he said. "What I am afraid of is that blockade, a blockade of Russia by the West which we cannot allow.
He also remarked on economic issues, in a further sign Moscow hopes to use the NATO issue to extract economic concessions from the US and the international community as a whole.