Medvedev will be a good President: Putin

Moscow, Feb 14: President Vladimir Putin today said front-runner presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev will be a good President. ''I am confident that he will be a good President and I am not ashamed and not afraid to give such a man leverage over the country's management,'' Putin said at his last annual press conference in the Kremlin.

''Besides other things, there is this personal chemistry, I trust him,'' he said at the conference which was televised live by main Russian TV channels. Medvedev is widely tipped to win the presidential election scheduled for March 2. Putin said Medvedev's economic programme, which he intends to make public in Krasnoyarsk soon, will continue a long-term action plan that he himself proposed at a recent State Council session.

''What he is to say in his speech in Krasnoyarsk is a continuation of the strategy that I set out at the expanded State Council session,'' he said.

Putin also denied that he was planning to head the United Russia party after he leaves office.

The Russian leader said he was never tempted to run for his third term after completing two consecutive terms and added that it was of paramount importance that everyone, from the head of state to ordinary citizens, observed the law.

''Some say the worst addiction is to power. I have never felt that, and I have never been addicted to anything,'' he said.

UNI