WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin felt certain that his handpicked successor Vladimir Putin would "not turn back the clock back" on democracy, ex-U.S. president Bill Clinton wrote in a newspaper article published Sunday. Clinton, who was part of an official U.S. delegation attending Yeltsin's funeral last week, wrote in the New York Times that the Russian leader felt confident that "President Putin would not turn the clock back, and we would find a way to work together."

But the former U.S. leader said he told Yeltsin that he did not entirely share that assessment.

"I told him I was impressed by what I had seen of President Putin, but wasn't sure he was as comfortable with or committed to democracy as Mr Yeltsin," said Clinton, who said a top goal of the late Russian president, who died last week from heart failure, aged 76, was to safeguard Russia's fledgling democracy. Clinton wrote in the daily that Yeltsin "clearly thought he had done the right thing in stepping down early and in selecting as his successor Vladimir Putin, who had the intelligence, energy and stamina the country needed to get Russia's economy on track and handle its complicated politics." He added that Yeltsin "had two objectives above all others. The first was to make sure that the Russian people never again had to live under communism, or autocratic ultra nationalism. The second was to form a solid, lasting partnership between a democratic Russia and the West."

Putin has been criticized for ruling Russia with an iron-fist and backtracking on his predecessor's democratic reforms and presiding over worsening relations with the West.

Last week he stunned Western capitals by suspending Russia's participation in the Soviet-era Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty on troop deployments.

Clinton and Yeltsin maintained good relations following the Russian leader's surprise resignation on New Year's Eve, 1999. The former U.S. president, whose wife Hillary is considered a front-runner in the effort to succeed him in the White House, eulogized Yeltsin as a pivotal figure who changed his country "mostly for the better." He praised Yeltsin's efforts "in developing a pluralistic democracy with a free press and a vigorous civil society, and ... his critical cooperation on security issues."

"Mr Yeltsin and I had our differences, and his position was often made more difficult by economic problems and political pressures. But at the end of the day, he almost always did the right thing," Bill Clinton wrote.