PARIS, June 4 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko said on Thursday he was personally convinced that Russia would eventually abolish capital punishment but said he would not rush into it in the face of popular opposition.

``We definitely have to get there, to the prospect of abolishing the death penalty. But... Russian society is not ready for the immediate abolition of the death penalty,'' he told a news conference in Paris on his first foreign trip since taking office in March.

``I do not doubt for a moment that it is our goal and that we will get there. But I'm not about to rush into it.''

Russia is bound under the terms of its accession to the Council of Europe human rights body in February 1996 to scrap capital punishment by next year.

But although President Boris Yeltsin introduced a moratorium on executions after the last person was shot in August 1996, the Communist-led parliament has made it clear it will not vote a formal abolition. Many legislators argue the death penalty is needed to fight mounting violent crime.

International human rights group Amnesty International said earlier this week it was concerned that the Russian government's commitment to abolition was weakening.

Kiriyenko, like his new justice minister who was quoted voicing similar sentiments last week, did not make clear whether he thought executions should re-start for the hundreds of Russians still on death row or whether the informal moratorium should be continued indefinitely.

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Johnson's Russia List

#2208

5 June 1998

davidjohnson@erols.com