The draft 2001 budget sailed through the State Duma on a second reading Friday powered by government concessions giving the regions a larger share of the tax take.

Deputies voted 302 to 129 for the 1.19 trillion-ruble ($42.7 billion) budget, with only the Communist and Agrarian parties opposed.

Lawmakers, angered by government pressure to pass the budget in its first reading, approved the legislation by a narrow six-vote margin on Oct. 6.

The Kremlin trumpeted the approval of what would be the first balanced budget in post-Soviet Russia.

"An important stage has been passed," President Vladimir Putin was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying. "Deputies have a more refined and acute feeling for the expectations of the people and are not allowing the thin fabric linking citizen and state to be torn."

Observers said the government’s decision to leave the regions with an additional 15 percent of total income tax proceeds tilted the vote in its favor. The concession, which hands 30 billion more rubles to the regions, gives them a total of 99 percent of income tax revenues.

The government also agreed to increase defense spending by 12.6 billion rubles to 218.9 billion rubles and spending on law enforcement by 2 billion to 131.6 billion rubles.

The draft budget sets aside almost 20 percent of its revenues, or 239 billion rubles, to service debt.

Spending on foreign diplomatic missions has been pared back by $100 million and the government has knocked down the interest rate with which it will repay its domestic debt from 2 percent to 1 percent.

The draft envisions 4 percent growth in gross domestic product and 12 percent inflation.

The bulk of the lawmakers who changed their minds since the first reading came from the Fatherland-All Russia party, which cast 40 additional votes. Forty-five of the 46 deputies from Fatherland-All Russia voted against the budget two weeks ago.

"We would like to continue dialogue with the government," said Vyacheslav Volodin, deputy head of Fatherland-All Russia.

"We will wait for details of our agreement [with the government] to be written into the budget in the third reading."

He gave no details about what deal his party had with the government.

It was not clear Friday why Fatherland-All Russia decided to change its stance. Alexei Alexandrov, the only member of Fatherland-All Russia who voted for the budget in first reading, has since been expelled from the faction.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov met with the head of Fatherland-All Russia, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, behind closed doors to discuss the budget on the eve of the second reading.

"The atmosphere during the meeting was wonderful," Luzhkov told reporters afterward.

Protests by opposing lawmakers before the vote Friday went mostly unheard.

Deputy Nikolai Kharitonov of the Agrarian party said the Duma was about to pass an "anti-peasant budget" and called on lawmakers to think of their relatives living in far-flung villages.

Recent Noble Prize winner and Duma Deputy Zhores Alfyorov asked for more funding for science and research.

Both suggestions went unheeded.

The second reading — traditionally the most difficult to push through parliament — designates budgetary expenditures ahead of largely formal third and fourth readings. The budget must then get the green light from the Federation Council before being signed into law by the president.