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MOSCOW, May 26 (Xinhua)
ThMOSCOW, December 23 (Xinhua) -- Russia's new Yabloko party
leader Grigory Yavlinsky said Sunday that he is convinced that
the party will get into the State Duma or lower house of the parliament
again at the next parliamentary elections.
"We have no doubts about this," Yavlinsky told reporters
here after the 10th congress of the party re-elected him its chairman
on Sunday.
Yabloko, which was transformed from a social-political bloc into
a party -- the Yabloko Russian Democratic Party -- at the congress
on Saturday, has 12,000 members. In a year, the number of its
supporters will double, he said.
Yavlinsky, who has been Yabloko leader since 1995, termed Russian
President Vladimir Putin's policy after the September 11 terror
attacks on the U.S. as "one of the most important things
in this year."
The main goal of Yabloko is to put Russia on the way of European
development, and the party recognizes it possible and necessary
to conduct constructive cooperation with the authorities, Yavlinsky
stressed.
At the congress that ended Sunday, Vladimir Lukin was elected
First Deputy Chairman of Yabloko, while Alexei Arbatov, Sergei
Ivanenko, Sergei Mitrokhin and Igor Artemyev became Chairman's
Deputies.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who recently became
the head of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, attended the
Yabloko congress. "The political and moral components"
of the Yabloko program coincide with the position of the Social
Democrats on key issues, Gorbachev said. The Russian Social-Democratic
Party is ready for cooperation with Yabloko, he added. The Yabloko
movement was established in October 1993, and took part in the
elections to the State Duma three times as a political organization.
Now, it has 19 seats in the Duma, following the leading parties
such as the Unity Party, the Communist Party and the Union of
Right-Wing Forces (SPS).
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