RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS BLAST US ON IRAQ, WANT MORE ARMS

MOSCOW, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The head of Russia's Communists, the biggest party in parliament, accused the United States of ``terrorism'' that could lead to world war in bombing Iraq and called on Thursday for an increase in Moscow's defence spending.

``Budget spending on national defence should be significantly strengthened and increased,'' Gennady Zyuganov told the State Duma lower house of parliament, which is due to begin debate on the much delayed 1999 budget next week.

Russia is in the depths of its worst economic crisis since the collapse of Soviet communism and the armed forces are so short of funds that Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov recently said they were no longer capable of going to war.

Zyuganov also said there was no ``no point'' in the Duma ratifying the 1993 START-2 nuclear weapons reduction treaty with the United States. Washington and the Kremlin have been pressing the Communist-led chamber to ratify the document for years.

President Boris Yeltsin and other officials strongly condemned the U.S. and British missile strikes against Iraq. But Zyuganov's comments were much tougher and he accused Yeltsin of allowing the United States to dominate world affairs by abandoning Moscow's role as a superpower.

However, representatives of all seven parties in the Duma condemned the missile strikes.

Zyuganov described the action, intended to force Baghdad to comply with United Nations demands that it give up weapons of mass destruction, as ``an act of state terrorism against the independent sovereign state of Iraq.''

``Gorbachev, Yeltsin and all those who helped them destroy the Soviet Union, bear responsibility for this vandalism,'' he said referring to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who was forced from office in 1991 as the union fell apart.

``If the USSR still existed, this wouldn't have happened,'' Zyuganov said, calling for a ``global front against those who are stirring up World War Three.''

Even liberal members of parliament expressed outrage.

Vladimir Lukin, a former Russian ambassador to Washington and the liberal head of the Duma's foreign affairs committee, called for Moscow to immediately restore economic relations with Baghdad, effectively abandoning U.N. sanctions.

Roman Popkovich, the chairman of the defence committee and a member of the pro-Yeltsin Our Home is Russia party, said Russia should now review its commitments under the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which laid down the post-Cold War balance of forces on the continent.