President Yeltsin suffers from high blood pressure and the advice of his doctors was that it would be better for him not to get off the aircraft.'However, when Mr Yeltsin landed in Moscow last night, he said that he was 'perfectly well' and denied that illness had prevented his meeting with Mr Reynolds He said he had slept through his stopover at Shannon 'I'm going to tell you the truth The trip lasted 18 hours and I simply slept My bodyguards should have woken me but they didn't. That's what happened.'Mr Yeltsin has suffered some health problems, including a back strain and a heart complaint. His sudden absences from government functions have often seemed more often attributable to drinking than to ill health, according to Kremlin- watchers.He is known to like a drink. During ceremonies in Berlin last month to mark the withdrawal of the last Russian troops from Germany, the Russian leader stumbled after a champagne lunch, seized a conductor's baton to direct an orchestra and, on another occasion, grabbed a microphone and sang tunelessly.Five years ago, the sternly teetotal Mikhail Gorbachev's image took a jolt during a similar Shannon stopover after a Moscow photographer caught him unwittingly downing his first whiskey.The Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, had lured him into downing a full-strength Irish coffee - a drink invented at Shannon as a pick-me-up for exhausted transatlantic travellers in the days before jet airliners.With his Government at last achieving a measure of stability, Mr Yeltsin was perhaps keen to avoid such pitfalls. No doubt his embassy in Dublin had warned him Mr Reynolds had gone off the rails in the last month, ending 58 years of abstinence with a celebratory glass of champagne after the IRA ceasefire.. ONE OF BRITAIN'S leading racehorse trainers died yesterday in a shooting incident at his home at Cheveley, near Newmarket, writes Sue Montgomery.

Police found the body of Alex Scott, 34, at Glebe House Stud after being called out to a reported shooting at 6.10pm They are treating his death as suspicious. Dr Nathaniel Carey, a Home Office pathologist, was due to carry out a post-mortem examination this morning. Mr Scott was private trainer to the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is one of the country's leading owners.He was educated at Cambridge University and gained training experience with the royal trainer Dick Hern before setting up in his own right in Newmarket in 1989.He tasted immediate success with Sheikh Maktoum's champion sprinter Cadeaux Genereux, winner that year of the July Cup and Nunthorpe Stakes and scored a rare British triumph at the Breeders Cup in the United States in 1991.. SOME British travel operators yesterday cancelled tours to India and others admitted that travellers were pulling out of trips because of fears about the spread of pneumonic plague. Thomson, Britain's biggest travel company, announced that it was scrapping four tours to India over the next two weeks while another operator, Hayes and Jarvis, has cancelled its Mogul Tour to the north of the subcontinent. Although the number of tourists involved is quite small, the plague is a serious threat to India's tourist industry, which last year was worth nearly pounds 1bn and was the country's third largest foreign exchange earner.Russia has ordered all tourist and business trips to India to be suspended; some Asian nations have banned flights to India; and other countries have warned people to avoid areas where the plague has struck.Thomson said: 'We took the decision in tandem with our tour agents in India, who also work for other European travel operators.

These companies, in Germany and Scandinavia, have stopped their tours too.'The cancelled tours would have taken about 60 people to the Taj Mahal in Agra and to Bombay and Delhi, where cases of plague have been reported. However, beach holidays in Goa, which usually do not involve travel outside the area, will continue.Hayes and Jarvis of London, which has cancelled its Mogul Tour for two weeks, will continue its other trips to India but will avoid all areas where the plague has been reported.The tour operator Kuoni, which specialises in trips to India and the Far East, will continue with all its touring holidays, including those to Agra, Bombay and Delhi, but admitted yesterday that some people had cancelled. John Sim, public relations manager, said that out of about 160 people due to go to India in the next week, 24 had cancelled and another 14 had decided to take alternative tours.Foreign Office advice is that travellers should not go to the state of Gujarat, where the outbreak started. A spokesman said that elsewhere there was no cause for concern although people 'should avoid crowded public places where possible'.Alarmed at the threat to tourism, the Indian government yesterday appealed to airlines to resume flights and operators not to cancel trips. Swarn Singh Boparai, director-general of the Ministry of Tourism, said that the plague represented only 'a small problem'.British Airways has not cancelled flights and said that it would continue flying from London to Delhi and Bombay.

It said: 'We have asked our crews to be extremely vigilant and see if people display any suspected symptoms.'Leading article, page 14. IN THE Asian community in Southall, west London, there are fears that pneumonic plague could spread to the neighbourhood or that relatives and friends in India might become infected. While there is no panic, local travel agents report that people stopped booking flights to India three days ago. Saffar Veena, at the video film hire counter in the United Meat Market, said yesterday: 'My whole family is in New Delhi I am very worried about them. I have tried to telephone them but have never been able to get a line. I am worried that it might be brought here by people travelling from India Everybody is worried.