YELTSIN CHECKS INTO HOSPITAL FOR TESTS.

Byline: Candice Hughes Associated Press 

Boris Yeltsin checked into a hospital for what his spokesman insisted Saturday were routine tests connected to the Russian president's coming bypass surgery.

``There is nothing extraordinary,'' said Igor Ignatyev, head of the presidential press service.

Ignatyev said Yeltsin would spend the weekend at the Central Clinical Hospital, an elite facility on the outskirts of Moscow commonly called the Kremlin hospital.

``We are not talking about a sudden rush to hospital. He is there for more tests and examination before the proposed operation,'' Ignatyev said. ``His doctors decided that in the process of getting ready for the operation, the president needed to undergo examination and some procedures.''

The spokesman said he didn't know what tests were planned and wasn't sure whether Yeltsin checked into the hospital Friday or Saturday.

The Kremlin has been tight-lipped about the 65-year-old president's illness, which has provoked fears of instability and of an internal power struggle.

The Kremlin's chief physician, Dr. Sergei Mironov, has said a date for Yeltsin's bypass would be set after a doctors' meeting at the end of the month. He said foreign specialists will advise Yeltsin's team of Russian doctors.

On Friday, Yeltsin accepted an offer from German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a friend and supporter, for two leading German cardiologists.

The American heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey will also be invited to consult with Yeltsin's medical team.

DeBakey, 88, is perhaps the world's most famous heart surgeon and a pioneer in the development of the artificial heart.

He and other leading heart specialists are to arrive in Moscow later this month for an international conference on the history of cardiovascular surgery.

Dr. Rinat Akchurin, who trained with DeBakey and did a bypass on Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in 1992, has been widely suggested as the surgeon likely to operate on Yeltsin.