A former world chess champion could get the nod as a presidential candidate in the upcoming Russian elections.
Garry Kasparov moved one step closer to securing the opposition nomination when he won the second round of primary voting held Tuesday by the country’s largest opposition group.
According to a report by the state news agency RIA Novosti, Kasparov garnered 66 of a possible 113 votes at the Moscow primary of the Other Russia, a loose coalition of anti-Kremlin opposition parties that will post a candidate in next year’s elections. Kasparov, whose father is Jewish, defeated ex-premier Mikhail Kasyanov, who finished second.
Other Russia will make its final decision on who will face off in a longshot bid against the Kremlin’s chosen successor at its party congress at the end of the month.
A few members of a fervently Orthodox group were to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York.
Members of Neturei Karta were expected to meet Tuesday with the Iranian president. The group has had a longstanding relationship with Ahmadinejad, and met with him last year when he was in New York for the U.N. General Assembly.
Neturei Karta members have made several trips to Iran to consult with Ahmadinejad, and in December attended a Holocaust revisionist conference in Tehran sponsored by the Iranian leader.
Neturei Karta’s spokesman, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, has claimed repeatedly that Zionism is at odds with Jewish law and that Israel is responsible for much of the conflict in the Middle East.
The Orthodox Union denounced the meeting.
“These are the same individuals who had the audacity to attend Mr. Ahmadinejad’s conference held last winter denying the truth of the Holocaust,” said the O.U.’s president, Stephen Savitsky, and executive vice president, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, in a statement issued Tuesday. “We hope by now the world understands that these individuals represent no one but themselves, have no constituency, have no following in the Jewish community and are a disgrace to the values and history of the Jewish People.”
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