Six stay in Russia presidency race, dissident ditched

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's election authorities narrowed the field of contenders in the 2008 presidential election to six on Saturday, rejecting a bid by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky because of his British nationality.

Russia will vote in March to elect a successor to President Vladimir Putin, who has already anointed close ally Dmitry Medvedev as his preferred candidate, making Medvedev's election virtually a foregone conclusion.

The Central Election Commission rejected applications from 7 independent candidates, including Bukovsky, who spent 13 years in and out of labor camps in the Soviet era and was exchanged for Chilean politician Luis Corvalan in 1976.

He has lived in Britain since then.

"In the Commission's opinion ... Bukovsky has a residency permit in another country. On top of that, he has not been living on the territory of Russia during the last 10 years," the commission's secretary Nikolai Konkin told Reuters.

The commission accepted the application of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, one of Putin's most outspoken critics.

Kasyanov, liberal Boris Nemtsov, whose party Union of Right Forces did not win any seats in parliamentary elections this month, and independent candidate Andrei Bogdanov have until January 16 to collect 2 million signatures each nationwide.

Medvedev, communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who have the backing of their parties, do not have to collect signatures and are likely to be registered as candidates next week.

Bukovsky, 65, who sought advice on his legal rights to run for President, said he would challenge what he described as a politically-motivated ruling in the courts.

"This decision is obviously political. Everything in this country is political. We will appeal this decision in the Supreme Court," Bukovsky told Reuters by telephone from Britain.

British-Russian relations have sunk to their lowest level since the Cold War following the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence official and also a British citizen, in London last year.

"WILDEST FALSIFICATION"

Moscow's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the man Britain suspects killed Litvinenko, led to tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats. Lugovoy is now a parliament member from a nationalist party led by Zhirinovsky.

Zyuganov, who heads the only openly anti-Kremlin party with seats in the new parliament, addressed a 1,000-strong rally of his supporters, who gathered in central Moscow to protest what they said was ballot fraud in December elections.

"We saw the wildest falsification and fraud during the recent election," Zyuganov told reporters as his mostly elderly supporters chanted "Zyuganov for President" amid heavy security.

Fair Russia, the smaller of two openly pro-Kremlin parties, which took many votes from communists in the election, voted unanimously at its congress in Moscow to back Medvedev's presidential bid.

Some commentators had suggested the Kremlin could put forward a second candidate to run alongside Medvedev, allowing Putin to keep his options open as long as possible. The Fair Russia congress was the last opportunity for the Kremlin to do this before a December 23 deadline for registering candidates.

(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe and Vlad Bomko)

(Writing by Gleb Bryanski, editing by Philippa Fletcher)