Russian Parliamentary Speaker Urges Israel to Work for Peace

The speaker of the Russian Parliament has urged Israel not “to play into the hands of the opponents of peace” by such actions as the Dec. 17 deportation of 415 Islamic fundamentalist activists to Lebanon.

Winding up a three-day visit to Israel on Tuesday, Ruslan Khasbulatov said he opposed “the deportation and other repressive measures, as a matter of principle.”

But carefully balancing his remarks, the Russian lawmaker told reporters the terrorist actions that provoked Israel’s move were unjustified.

He said also the Russian Parliament greatly appreciates the basic policy thrust of Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor government, which, he said, involves real negotiations and genuine concessions.

Khasbulatov, a Moslem member of the Chechen people, said all the Moslem republics of the states that formerly comprised the Soviet Union are “secular and democratic,” and that, as such, there is no place in them for religion to play a political role.

“It is one thing to respect religion and to assist clerics, especially since religions in the Soviet Union suffered for so long. But it is quite another to allow religious fundamentalism to take on a political role,” he said.

Asked about emigration from his country, Khasbulatov spoke with concern about a “brain drain” of “young, talented people, both scientists and scholars in the arts.”

He referred in this context to Jewish emigration, but said that, from the Russian perspective, the problem is much greater, as it affects many sectors of the population.

“It shows our society is sick,” he said. “We have to find ways of improving matters at home.”

A COLORFUL FIGURE

Khasbulatov met with Prime Minister Rabin and other government figures, and also with Palestinian leaders before leaving for visits to Egypt and Jordan.

Khasbulatov, 50, is one of the more colorful figures on the Russian political landscape.

Once a staunch ally of President Boris Yeltsin — he stood with Yeltsin against the Communist hard-liners during the August 1991 putsch — Khasbulatov became Yeltsin’s most dangerous enemy after the Russian president failed to include him in his Cabinet following the putsch’s failure.

Using his position as Parliament speaker, Khasbulatov has appealed to the conservative, formerly Communist majority in the Parliament to slow Yeltsin’s reforms at every step, under the banner of promoting parliamentary power as essential to Russia’s new democracy.

A former lecturer in socialist economics at Moscow’s Plekhanov Institute, Khasbulatov is regarded even by his enemies as intelligent and politically astute.

Prior to his departure for Israel, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he was looking forward to his first visit to Israel, as well as to Jordan and Egypt, where he has Arab friends from his days at Moscow State University in the 1960s.

In Jordan, he said, he was also looking forward to meeting the small Chechen community.

(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Alexander Lesser in Moscow.)