Faraway tribute to Yeltsin

The former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, whose reign was marked by the repeated felling of Soviet era monuments, has finally had a statue made in his honour.

But the monument has not been lovingly erected in Red Square. Instead an obscure businessman has erected it thousands of miles away on a mountainside in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan.

The president of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akayev, attended the unveiling of the statue, a flatteringly thin two-metre tall white gypsum likeness. It will stand at a museum in Cholpon-Ata on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul, the site of Mr Yeltsin's past two summer holidays.

The sculptor's identity has not been revealed, yet he has given the former Russian president a distinctly Central Asian appearance.

Vladimir Leonov, a spokesman for the presidential press service, said: "It was done by a private businessman, Tashkul Kereksizov [a former customs officer and reportedly the country's richest man] on his own private initiative."

Another presidential official said the statue was "both a symbol of Kyrgyz and Russian friendship" and "a tribute to a person who greatly contributed to the development of these relations".