Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov has confirmed he is dropping out of the contest to become the country's next president.

Mr Primakov first signalled his intention to withdraw last month, when he disclosed that he was seeking to become speaker of the Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma.

He subsequently pulled out of that contest as well.

In a statement broadcast on Russian television on Friday Mr Primakov said: "I have reached on long reflection a final decision that I will not participate in a presidential election."

"During the [Duma] election and during my first days in the State Duma, I felt how far is our society from a civic visage, from a true democracy," he added.

Mr Primakov, who heads the Fatherland-All Russia movement, was once considered a leading candidate to replace former President Boris Yeltsin and said as recently as December that he would stand in the 26 March poll.

Since then, acting president Vladimir Putin has emerged as the clear favourite to win the election.

The BBC's Paul Anderson, speaking from Moscow, said: "The meteoric rise of Vladimir Putin and a worse than expected performance by his political party in parliamentary elections in December have dimmed Primakov's chances."

Mr Primakov is the only member of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's inner sanctum to have survived at the top of the new Russian state. He is an old Soviet career diplomat who became head of the Federal Security Service which replaced the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He made his name on the international stage when he went to Baghdad to try and avert the Gulf War after the invasion of Kuwait.