Saturday November 21 2:44 PM ET

YELTSIN OUTRAGED BY SLAYING OF LIBERAL MP

By Konstantin Trifonov

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - The overnight murder of a liberal parliamentary deputy shocked and outraged Russian leaders Saturday, moving President Boris Yeltsin to take personal charge of the investigation.

Police said a man and a woman intercepted Galina Starovoitova and an aide in the stairwell at her apartment in the center of St Petersburg Friday night and shot them with an automatic weapon and a pistol.

Starovoitova was shot in the head and killed instantly, police told a briefing. The aide, Ruslan Linkov, was hospitalized with serious head wounds.

In a statement read out by top Kremlin aide Oleg Sysuyev on Ekho Moskvy radio Yeltsin said he was ``deeply outraged'' and vowed to see the killers brought to justice.

Yeltsin described Starovoitova as a ``passionate tribune of democracy'' and one of his own ``closest comrades in arms.''

After reading the text, Sysuyev said he had just spoken to Yeltsin's daughter, who told him ``the president is bitterly upset by this barbarity.''

But as Starovoitova's allies leveled accusations against her political foes, Yeltsin's press spokesman called for calm.

``We must not give in to emotions, we must not draw hasty political conclusions until the final conclusions of the investigation,'' Dmitry Yakushkin told NTV commercial television.

``We must not use this murder as an excuse to divide the country in two. This is a challenge to the whole of society, to all of us. This is the president's view,'' he said.

Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov also condemned the murder.

``This banditry must be brought to an immediate end,'' he said in televised remarks.

Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin flew to St Petersburg Saturday morning and told reporters at the airport he was sent on Yeltsin's personal order to oversee the investigation.

He said a criminal case had been launched under a statute covering ``terrorism.'' A spokeswoman for the ministry said he would return to Moscow Saturday. Interfax news agency said he would brief Yeltsin in person.

Starovoitova, 52, a co-chairman of the Democratic Russia political party, was one of the most outspoken pro-democracy campaigners during reforms under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the early years of post-Soviet Russia.

More recently, as electoral defeats thinned the ranks of liberals in the State Duma lower house of parliament, she was known as a relatively lonely voice loudly upholding the principles of the early pro-democracy movement.

In recent weeks she was a leader in the campaign to censure a senior Communist deputy for repeated anti-Jewish remarks.

She was reported to be preparing to run for the vacant seat of governor of the Leningrad region surrounding St Petersburg, and was also said to be mulling a presidential bid in 2000.

Gorbachev said he had no doubt the killing was political.

``She was erudite, brave, active,'' he told Interfax. ``This is a serious loss not just for those close to her but for Russia.''

Starovoitova was the first high level woman politician to be assassinated in Russia. Six Duma deputies have been killed in Russia since the Duma was founded in 1993.

The murder was one of several high-profile attacks in recent weeks on Russian politicians in St Petersburg.

Two allies of the Communist Duma speaker, Gennady Seleznyov, were attacked in October. One survived after being shot, the other was killed by a bomb blast.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in the city's Dvortsaya Square with flowers, Russian tricolor flags decorated with black ribbons and portraits of Starovoitova.

Local politicians said they believed her murder was linked to next month's municipal elections in St Petersburg, adding that organized criminal groups were seeking control of the city.