Russia was plunged into a fresh political crisis on the eve of President Clinton's visit as President Yeltsin's choice of prime minister was overwhelmingly rejected yesterday by the Duma.
Mr Victor Chernomyrdin failed to reach even half the votes he needed to become prime minister and had to listen to opposition speeches accusing him of corruption and lying when he last served as the leader of the government.
President Clinton, who received the news before he left Washington for Moscow, made a strong appeal for Russia to stay on the path of economic reform and warned of the danger for the rest of the world of having an unstable nuclear power. He vowed support - but only if a new government stuck to reform.
"If Russia will stay on the path of reform, I believe America and the rest of the West should help them," he said in a speech shortly before he left the US for Russia. "What I want to do is to go there and tell them that the easy thing to do is not the right thing to do. The easy thing to do would be to try to go back to the way they did it before and it's not possible.
"If they will stay on the path of reform to stabilise their society and to strengthen their economy and to get growth back, then I believe America and the rest of the western nations with strong economies should help them."
It was not clear last night what, if anything, President Clinton might offer Mr Yeltsin in terms of practical assistance to help Russia solve its problems other than verbal support and exhortations. He is due to meet the Russian leader at least twice - this morning and again tomorrow. He will also meet parliamentary leaders and other prominent political figures, including Reserve General Alexander Lebed, and make a speech on economics.
White House officials who preceded the President to Moscow said that the vote against Mr Chernomyrdin in the Duma, the Russian parliament, would not change the situation very much for Mr Clinton's visit. He was coming mainly to meet President Yeltsin and Mr Chernomyrdin and his government would continue to operate until a new one was appointed.
Last night President Yeltsin renominated Mr Chernomyrdin to head a new government - in essence putting it up to the Duma to reject him again. Mr Yeltsin can do this three times but if Mr Chernomyrdin is rejected three times, the Duma would have to be dissolved and new elections called.
Most observers believe this would only make the political crisis more serious and the economic situation more precarious.
Mr Chernomyrdin needed 226 votes of the 450-seat Duma to be approved but succeeded in winning only 94. The Communist party and its allies, as well as the Agrarian conservative party and the Liberal Democratic party of the extreme right-wing maverick, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, all voted against him.
If the Communists and Liberal Democrats continue to oppose Mr Chernomyrdin he has no hope of winning the needed absolute majority of votes in the Duma. The assembly has a week to decide on his second nomination.
President Clinton and his high-powered delegation are thus flying into a chaotic political situation which the White House had hoped to avoid when it looked at the weekend that Mr Chernomyrdin had reached an agreement with the Communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, over a programme of government. But the agreement fell apart on Sunday, making Mr Chernomyrdin's humiliation yesterday inevitable.
Mr Clinton addressed the Russian crisis during a speech yesterday to American schoolchildren. He appealed to the Russian people over the heads of their leaders to stay on the path of economic reform. He insisted that Russian co-operation would be needed to ensure that nuclear weapons did not get into the hands of terrorists and to resolve the Kosovo crisis.
Pointing out that Russia and the US still have the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world and that India and Pakistan have tested nuclear weapons, Mr Clinton said: "We need to be moving the world away from nuclear war, not towards it."