The IMF says it has no evidence that its funds have been diverted or misused.
The Swiss justice authorities are investigating separate allegations of Russian money laundering in connection with the Mabetex construction firm, which renovated Kremlin buildings, and have frozen a number of bank accounts.
Yeltsin's office has strongly denied allegations that the president and his family may have benefited from money or facilities provided by Mabetex in Switzerland.
The Russian government has said the probes are part of a political plot by hostile elements in the West to undermine confidence in Russia and Yeltsin.
US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said this week that Washington would not support the disbursement of further IMF aid to Russia without adequate safeguards and accounting for previous use of funds.
But the Treasury hastened to say he was not calling for a halt to international aid.
Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder both stressed that none of the allegations of laundering of IMF money have yet been substantiated. Schroeder could easily blame past profligate aid to Moscow on his conservative predecessor, Helmut Kohl. But his government has stuck to Kohl's line that Germany must support Russia financially to secure stability on its eastern borders.
"We can't afford for our relationship to sour substantially, nor can we afford instability in Russia," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said this week.
The IMF admitted in unusually blunt terms in July that the Russian central bank had lied to it in 1996 about the state of its reserves. But Managing Director Michel Camdessus said in an interview this week he saw no reason to stop the next payment of a US$4.5 billion credit line that is essentially to enable Moscow to service its existing debts to the IMF.
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