President Yeltsin has been wishing Russians a happy New Year across the eleven time zones of the world's largest country. In a televised address, the Russian leader said 1997 would be remembered for its joyful and its sad events. Our Moscow correspondent Andrew Harding reports:

This was a "feel-good" speech, deliberately short on politics -- another example of the detached, almost Tsar-like role which President Yeltsin has begun to adopt. He spoke about all the new children born in 1997 and sent his best wishes to veterans and the elderly.

Mr Yeltsin and his government seem determined to end the year on a positive note. The government has been hailing its success in paying off a backlog of wages to millions of State workers -- the Central Bank had apparently been working round the clock to meet a December 31 deadline.

Russia's reform chief, Anatoly Chubais, has also been accentuating the positive. He said industrial decline had been halted, unemployment had fallen and wages had risen this year.

In an interview earlier, though, President Yeltsin conceded that 1997 had not been a complete success. He said he was disappointed with his government's economic performance.