He called the American-led bombing of Afghanistan "morally tainted," hit out at the capitalist "market state," and attacked computer games, talent shows and the Walt Disney Company for exploiting young people's obsessions.

The comments were Mr. Yeltsin's first explicit expression of dissatisfaction over the latest round of American-led bombings of Iraq, or over Washington's stance on the Balkan conflict.

Afghan officials said today that 17 civilians, including women and children, had been killed in an American-led bombing of a mountainous region of southern Afghanistan, where United States Special Forces have been fighting rebels since Monday.

What was unusual about it was that the world was paying attention now because of the American-led bombing.

A bitter war of words between Iraq and its Arab neighbors has followed last month's American-led bombings, leaving Iraq more isolated than at any time since the Persian Gulf war.

From the start, China has virulently opposed the American-led bombing of Yugoslavia.

The Iraqis had given themselves until April 1991 to complete the task, but the American-led bombing of Iraq intervened in January and the program was derailed.

As months go by without evidence of his whereabouts, several senior officials said this week that they were skeptical that he survived the American-led bombing in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan last December.

Although aid agencies had expected that thousands of Afghans would try to flee to Iran after the American-led bombing began, the huge exodus has not come.

American-led bombing throughout the 1990's, usually over quarrels about United Nations inspections of Iraqi weapons programs, and the sanctions helped Mr. Hussein to consolidate his power.