Kremlin opponents cautious after call to unite

Leaders of the opposition Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov (R) smile during a news conference in Moscow, March 19, 2008.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The anti-Kremlin Other Russia movement called on Russian opposition forces to form a coalition on Wednesday, but opposition parties expressed doubts such a grouping would be viable.

Other Russia, uniting market reform liberals and neo-Bolsheviks, boycotted parliamentary polls in December and March's presidential election as illegitimate.

The pro-Kremlin United Russia party won by a landslide in the parliamentary election and President Vladimir Putin's protege Dmitry Medvedev easily won in March. Western monitors criticized both elections as flawed.

Other Russia said it was time to consolidate the nation's main opposition forces by creating an alternative parliament, under a provisional name of the National Assembly, by the end of this spring.

"The National Assembly's task is to seat all at one table ... both leftists and rightists," National Bolshevik Party head and Other Russia co-chairman Eduard Limonov told journalists.

"At a time the country's political institutions have been de facto eliminated, it is necessary to create a platform on which various political forces will be able to exchange views and form an agenda," said former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, an Other Russia leader.

Formed in summer 2006, Other Russia has staged protests in Moscow and Russia's second city St Petersburg, but has failed to form a broad opposition movement and is scorned by Putin as a "handful of marginals".

Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, a prominent opposition parliamentarian, several human rights champions and observers from other left- and right-wing opposition parties have deserted Other Russia over the past year.

Some of the parties invited to take part in the National Assembly expressed doubts it would be able to unite Kremlin opponents from both flanks.

"This is a new attempt to mix up the left and right in one pot and this is not realistic," Nikita Belykh, chairman of the liberal Union of Right-Wing Forces party (SPS), told Reuters.

Ilya Yashin, a senior member of the liberal Yabloko party, said Other Russia "must have already exhausted itself, and so it seeks a new form of cooperation with the opposition."

"Let's first receive an invitation to this assembly," ex-premier Kasyanov's spokeswoman Yelena Dikun said. "We'll decide once we've received and studied it."

(Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Janet Lawrence)