(Moscow, February 1) -- The public assembly of members and supporters of the Transnational Radical Party and Anti-militarist Radical Association (ARA) has taken place in Hotel Izmajlovo. There were participating about one hundred of persons enrolled to the RP and ARA, or participating in certain Radical campaigns.

The assembly has been opened by the intervention of Nikolaj Khramov, coordinator of the Radical Party in Russia and secretary of the Anti-militarist Radical Association. He informed the present people about the recent news concerning the course of Radical initiatives, in particular about the recently achieved essential successes: the positive result of the voting on the UN General Assembly the last December on the question about convening in 1998 the International Diplomatic Conference of plenipotentiaries on the establishing the International Criminal Court, as well as successful finishing the petition campaign for Wei Jingsheng to Nobel Peace Prize 1997.

During the discussion (interventions made by Sergej Sorokin, Valentin Oskockij, Lev Levinson, Leonid Evfimjevskij, Ivan Zasurskij, Vadim Hesse, Anzhelika Chechina, Ljudmila Vahnina and others) there were mainly touched the questions connected with support to the Borscev - Rybakov draft bill on the moratorium on executions, which should be discussed in the State Duma on February 12, as well as with actions undertaken by Radical Party and ARA in the framework of the campaign for the soonest adoption of the law on alternative civilian service.

In many intervention it was stressed also the necessity to undertake active steps to counter-act the militarist hysteria on NATO enlargement exaggerated by the lobbyists of military industrial complex and generals, as well as about the need to break the silent consensus to forget about president Yeltsin's decree No. 722 (May 16, 1996) about abolition of the conscription and transition to the professional armed forces by the year 2000.

In fact, the assembly has also launched the "Mail Attack on the State Duma" - a campaign of sending postcards addressed to the Duma speaker Mr. Gennadij Seleznev and calling upon to pass as soon as possible a non-discriminatory law on alternative civilian service. The nearest goal fixed in the framework of the "Mail Attack on the State Duma" is 1,000 postcards on the Duma speaker's writing table by the 1st of March.

The day of the 1st February marked also the successful launching the membership campaign in Radical Party and ARA for 1997. During the assembly 13 persons joined the Radical Party for 1997 and 31 persons enrolled to ARA, paying totally 1,300,382 rubles (~231 US$) and 1,787,993 rubles (~318 US$) respectively, while other 78,000 rubles were collected as anonymous contributions.