MOSCOW, 20 March 2003 — Members of Russia’s Communist Party and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party walked out of the lower house of parliament yesterday to protest the rejection of their proposal to discuss the Iraqi crisis.
The lawmakers had hoped to force a one-hour discussion of Washington’s ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to quit the country or face war. But the measure, which was put forward twice, failed both times to receive the necessary 226 votes.
Nationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an outspoken critic of the United States, accused his fellow lawmakers of cowardice for not standing up to Washington, noting that even some ministers from America’s biggest ally, Britain, had resigned over the matter.
“We’ve been opponents for 50 years ... (and) we don’t even want to discuss it,” Zhirinovsky yelled in remarks shown on Russia’s TVS. “It’s a shame.”
Communist legislator Sergei Reshulsky called on all lawmakers who didn’t agree with “state terrorist Bush who is in fact beginning the third world war” to join in the protest and leave the session.
A delegation of high-ranking Russian Islamic and Orthodox Christian clerics, as well as the governor of Russia’s Kalmykia region, which is home to many Buddhists, joined the anti-US chorus. At a news conference attended also by Iraq’s ambassador to Moscow — who accompanied them on a visit to Baghdad this week — the clerics praised what they called the calm and courage of the Iraqi people, and lambasted the United States for ignoring anti-war opinion in the world.
“We expressed full solidarity with the Iraqi people,” Talgat Tadzhuddin, the chief mufti of Russia, said summing up the trip, adding that he was ashamed that the delegation had to leave as quickly as it did, after less than two days, because of the threat of imminent war.
The Kalmykian governor, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, described being summoned to see Odai Hussein, Saddam’s eldest son, at 5 a.m. after US President George W. Bush’s ultimatum, and being told that Saddam and his family would stay and “’defend our country and our people.”’
Despite the closer ties between Moscow and Washington, the Kremlin often bridle at what they regard as a US penchant for unilateral action and for ignoring Russian protests. Russian lawmakers on Tuesday postponed a vote on ratification of a US-Russian nuclear arms treaty due to the US threat of war. The decision not to take up the debate was criticized by the Kremlin’s parliamentary representative yesterday.
