MOSCOW. March 23 (Interfax) - Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov thinks that the presidential term in Russia should be extended.

"Yes, to increase the presidential term. I openly state: I am an advocate of this idea," Ivanov said in an interview with the Izvestiya newspaper, which will be published on Monday, March 24.

Asked whether he is preparing to "a holiday of new rime minister's arrival," Ivanov said: "it is always a holiday when a new prime minister comes." "To be serious, the period between the two elections (presidential and parliamentary) was really difficult. And the idea to separate the parliamentary and presidential elections is absolutely right," Ivanov said.

This can be secured through increasing the presidential term in office, Ivanov said.

"There were no serious failures, no decision that had been made earlier was stopped," in the period of electoral campaigns starting the last fall, the first deputy PM said.

"The government fulfilled its functions. And it should carry them on like a relay baton until May 7. Everybody should resign, and then the new president and the new prime minister will decide who will stay and who will go," Ivanov said.

"Personally, I am quite calm about this," he said, adding that "the whole government will resign, but no one has any complexes about this: this is a usual affair and we got accustomed to it."

Asked about whose portraits would be in his office, if appointed to any, Ivanov said: "No portraits have ever been in my office for nine years of the work."

"There is one photograph with Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin). It was made in 1999. You look now at it with interest. Nine years like a slave aboard a galley. And this cane be seen pretty well," he said.

"I think I will not have a portrait. But I have enough of photographs with Dmitry Anatolyevich (Medvedev)," Ivanov added.

"In my opinion such photographs are much better than official portraits," he said.