Russian Lawmaker Forms Group Demanding Yeltsin’s Resignation

An outspoken Russian lawmaker founded a promilitary movement Saturday and urged supporters to push for the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin.

Lev Rokhlin, a retired general, said Yeltsin was the main obstacle to his new movement - called Support the Army, Defense Industry and Science.

The prime task therefore will be “to rouse the people for peaceful acts of protest” and force Yeltsin to step down, Rokhlin told more than 1,000 participants, news agencies said.

Rokhlin, who gained respect as a commander in the Chechen war, was expelled from the pro-government Our Home Is Russia party earlier this month after he began calling for unseating Yeltsin. He remains chairman of the Defense Committee in parliament’s lower house.

He has blamed Yeltsin’s administration for the sorry state of the country’s military and questioned reform plans that include drastic cuts in manpower.

He attracted some influential people to the founding congress of his movement, including Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who lost to Yeltsin in the 1996 election but still leads the largest faction in parliament.

Zyuganov told participants that the Communists and their allies would support the new movement, the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying, and repeated hardliners’ opposition to the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty. He said parliament would not ratify it, as the Kremlin is demanding.

Retired Gen. Alexander Lebed, who is preparing to run in the 2000 residential elections, has offered publicly to ally with Rokhlin.