"IT'S GOOD to be home," the Chancellor sighed, wiping the sweat off his forehead as he gazed at the faces of the 5,000 people who had come to welcome him on this balmy night "Helmut, Helmut," the crowd thundered "Our Helmut". He was once described by the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs as the "worst central banker in the world".t Ministers of the G7 industrialised nations and officials from the World Bank, the IMF and the European Commission are to meet in London on Monday for consulations overshadowed by the crisis in Russia and Asia.. Labour has decided to make Mr Dewar's attachment to traditional values and his modest image the focus of its appeal in the run-up to next May's election.Mr Dewar trails slightly behind the Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, in opinion polls on who would make the best first minister in the Home Rule administration.Mr Salmond marked the anniversary of the referendum victory in more flamboyant style, criss-crossing Scotland in a helicopter in a series of public appearances.Countering critics within the Labour Party who believe the "New Labour'' tag could prove counter-productive north of the border, because of its metropolitan Blairite overtones, Mr Dewar said Scotland must not be a prisoner of the past.Mr Dewar pledged a nursery place for all three-year-olds in the lifetime of the government - a promise made for no other part of the UK - and 60 new community schools, with counselling and health services provided under the same roof as education.Scottish Conservative leader David McLetchie said the "vision statement" smacked more of desperation than reality. Nor will it rejoice at the announcement by the liberal party, Yabloko, that it will not join the Primakov administration.Mr Gerashchenko's appointment will cause hearts to sink furthest of all, especially among the IMF and other creditors. "So what must we do? Repeat the wild capitalism that we had up till now? Or use the experience of other countries?"The West will take little comfort from those words, which suggest a move away from the market and monetarism.

In his pre-confirmation speech to the Duma he promised not to return to Soviet-style command systems but emphasised the need for state intervention, comparing his approach to that of Roosevelt's New Deal. Mr Primakov acknowledged that there was a "serious danger of the country fragmenting".His appointment as a compromise prime minister should lower the political temperature, though he will need to act fast to stop the economy running out of control. Although Russia was "on the brink of crisis", the country now had a "government of concord", he said.The scale of that crisis has been underlined by reports that some of Russia's 89 regions and republics are straining at the federal leash and introducing measures that cut across the constitution. Isolated and remote, he has weakened his grip on a once all-powerful office within days. Yesterday the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a former sponsor of Mr Chernomyrdin, said Mr Yeltsin "has to resign, and soon".He tried to salvage his image by appearing on television with an address to the people in which he conceded there had been no government for three weeks. The first, the Central Bank chairmanship, goes to Viktor Gerashchenko; the second is a senior economic position, almost certainly first deputy premier, for Yuri Maslyukov, a Communist ex-head of the Gosplan central- planning colossus.A deal giving parliament the right to approve some Cabinet appointments has also been signed by Mr Yeltsin and is still before the Duma.

Mr Yeltsin had to abandon his first choice, Viktor Chernomyrdin, after the Duma twice rejected him, and has also handed his opponents at least two senior government positions. THE HEAVY price Boris Yeltsin paid in his struggle to secure a government has become clear with the appointment of a Communist-backed official and avid money-printer to the chairmanship of the Central Bank. It raised Western fears that Russia is lurching back to methods of the past and destroyed much of the relief that yesterday accompanied the Duma's 315-63 confirmation of the Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov as Prime Minister. Yesterday he named Igor Ivanov as his Foreign Minister. The appointment of Mr Primakov, 68, an ex-intelligence chief and perestroika liberal, closes the conflict between the President and legislature, which has seen a shift in the balance of power. It can also surprise onlookers, as Dr Pritchard discovered: "I looked up from gathering these samples at 6.30 on a Sunday morning to find two paper boys looking at me in complete amazement.".