MOSCOW, Nov 5 (AFP) - Some weeping and many dressed in shabby clothes, several hundred elderly mothers gathered on a boat in Moscow on Saturday to launch a political party calling for peace in separatist Chechnya and democracy in Russia.
The unusual rally gathered 164 deputies -- a handful of them elderly fathers -- representing 50 of Russia's 88 regions. They all rose hands in favor of launching a political party against a war that helped Russian President Vladimir Putin rise to power five years ago.
Called the United People's Party of Soldiers' Mothers, the group has already been accused by Russian nationalists of being funded from abroad -- an accusation it does not deny, but which it says is not illegal -- and has recently offered to launch peace talks with separatist Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov.
The Kremlin views Maskhadov and other Chechen commanders as "terrorists" out of bounds for any kind of negotiations, placing a 10 million dollar bounty on his head.
"We have decided to enter politics because Russia is changing for the worse," said party representative Ida Kuklina, addressing the downcast crowd from a podium as military songs played on in the background.
"Human rights groups are having more and more difficulty functioning in Russia," Kuklina said. "Our future is unclear, and we no longer seem to be able to affect the government, or our country's future."
She spoke against the background of a song whose chorus read: "Mothers, don't give birth to boys just so that they could go to war."
The group was previously only registered as a committee, and its registration as a party allows it to field candidates for regional and parliamentary elections.
Few analysts expect it to make much of an impact on Russia's politics, and the meeting received only limited coverage in the Moscow media, which has fallen largely under state control since Putin rose to power in 2000.
But the gathering forms a rare show of public opposition to Putin's regime, with parliament now dominated by pro-Kremlin factions and legislation swept through the chamber often without debate.
The mothers' party disputes official Russian figures that just over 5,000 Russian soldiers have died in the Chechen war, saying the toll is at least three times higher because Moscow does not count soldiers killed of their wounds in hospital at a later date.
The rebel or civilian casualty figures have never been officially verified.
A wave of suicide bombings and September's Beslan school hostage crisis which ended up killing more than 340 people, half of them children, have sparked new talk about negotiations with the guerrillas, despite firm refusal to do so by Russian authorities.
Calls by the mothers' party to help lead such talks have been flatly slapped down by the Kremlin, although recent public opinion polls suggest about half of all Russians support some form of official contact between the two sides.
"Our party is going to be the party of peace and reconciliation," Kuklina said.
Another top party official, Maria Fedulova, told the Interfax news agency that the first contacts with Maskhadov's officials would be made later this month, but disclosed no further details.
"We are doing this ... to prevent future hostage takings."
Interfax said the meeting would take place "in one of the Western nations," but gave no details of who might be involved.
11/06/2004 18:27 GMT - AFP