SOCHI. Sept 14 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday described new Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov as "a man with a rich professional and life experience" and praised his performance as an economic administrator and head of an intelligence service dealing with financial offenses.

"He is a man with a rich professional and life experience. One can say a true professional, a brilliant administrator," Putin said at a meeting with members of the Valdai discussion club.

Asked whether Zubkov may run for president in 2008, Putin said: "As any Russian citizen, Zubkov may take part in the presidential election."

The president mentioned that Zubkov himself, when asked whether he would run for president, "did not exclude the possibility that he would."

"That was a well-considered, calm answer. He still has work to do, he has to get through the (parliamentary) elections," Putin said.

"A year or a year and a half ago, many said we had an 'empty field' -there was no one to choose from. Currently a minimum of five people can be named who stand a real chance of running for president and getting elected. It's good than one more person has emerged. The Russians surely will have somebody to choose from," the president said.

Putin also made a detailed account of Zubkov's work record.

Zubkov had spent more than a decade working in agriculture, where he "started with some of the lowest positions," the president told the club meeting.

Zubkov "was sent to sort out a state farm that was on its last legs, and he - he's modest now and doesn't talk about that - he made it the best in the Soviet Union for a specific period," Putin said.

After that, Zubkov was put at the helm of an association of state farms, and he also made it the best, the head of state said.

"He didn't do any ideological work. He always worked in the economy," Putin said.

Posts held by Zubkov in the Soviet era included that of head of an agricultural department of a regional Communist Party committee and that of first deputy head of a regional government body. Putin said both had been economic jobs.

Putin also praised Zubkov's performance as St. Petersburg city tax and levy minister and Russian first deputy finance minister.

The president described Zubkov as a very honest man, mentioning that Zubkov had been given the task of setting up the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, a new intelligence service that deals with financial offenses.

"He has shown his best qualities. It is an analytical structure that gathers a tremendous volume of information, and Zubkov not a single time used such information for any unseemly ends," Putin said.

"Not a single corruption case has been registered at Zubkov's agency throughout his period of work (there)," the president said.

Putin said the work of the Financial Monitoring Service had resulted in several thousand people being prosecuted and in 521 of them being convicted.

This, the president said, was comparable to numbers of people convicted of crimes of this kind in leading European countries and was equivalent to half of convicts of this category in the United States.

"All this put together underlay the decision (to nominate Zubkov as prime minister). It is exactly this kind of person - honest, balanced, wise - that Russia needs in this period," Putin said.