President Yeltsin's chief human rights adviser, Vladimir Kartashkin, is quoted by the news agency ITAR TASS, as saying that Russia might have to use the death penalty again, because of the recent rise in violent crime.

President Yeltsin imposed a moratorium on the use of capital punishment in 1996 after Russia joined the Council of Europe, which bans executions in peacetime.

Over the weekend the prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, referred to last month's murder of the prominent liberal member of parliament, Galina Starovoitova, and said violent criminals should be executed.