(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-15 02:27

MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin signalled on Friday he might return to the presidency after 2012, an analyst who met him said, hours after the Russian leader said new prime minister Viktor Zubkov could make a good successor to him.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with visiting foreign academics in the southern Russian resort city of Sochi September 14, 2007. [Reuters]

On a day when President Putin appeared to finally lift the lid on the tightly-guarded question of what he plans after he steps down next year, he made clear to a group of visiting foreign academics he would remain a political force after 2008.

"Mr. Putin is not planning to disappear into the fog," Ariel Cohen, one of the Russia scholars Putin met in the southern city of Sochi on Friday, told Reuters by telephone.

Cohen said the academics asked Putin if he planned a return after 2012, the end of his successor's first term.

"He said it depends, he said he cares about the stability of Russia," said Cohen, senior researcher at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.

"He did not rule out he would try and return to the presidency."

But Cohen added: "(Putin) did not indicate that he wants to weaken the next president in order to ensure his comeback." Kremlin spokesmen could not be reached to confirm the remarks.

Putin must step down next year because the constitution limits a president to two consecutive terms in office. But it does not stop him coming back afer his successor's first term ends in 2012, or possibly sooner.

One analyst said Zubkov, the virtually-unknown technocrat confirmed by parliament as prime minister on Friday, could make an ideal successor as president because he was a Putin loyalist and would step aside after four years to let him return.

Putin has never said anything in public about returning, saying only he planned an unspecified political role after 2008.

He has amassed enormous power and is immensely popular at home. The question of how he plans to manage the transition to a successor has been preoccupying ordinary Russians and investors who have sunk billions of dollars into the booming economy.

Earlier on Friday, parliament confirmed financial watchdog chief Zubkov by 381 votes to 47. He was Putin's surprise nomination for the job.

Observers had expected the post of prime minister, vacated after Putin sacked Mikhail Fradkov, to go to one of the heavyweights inside Putin's team who have been jockeying for months to succeed Putin.

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