MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Communists on Saturday expelled the speaker of the lower house of parliament for disobeying the party's ruling that he resign his post, and called the new U.S.-Russian arms reduction treaty a "full, unconditional capitulation by Russia."
The moves reflected the growing gulf between the Communists, once Russia's dominant political movement, and the centrists who comprise President Vladimir Putin's power base - and who have been chipping away steadily at the Communists' lingering influence over policy.
Shortly after the December 1999 elections that gave them a solid parliamentary majority, the centrists concluded a deal with the Communists to allow them to hold onto many leading positions in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
But earlier this spring, the Duma leadership reshuffled committee chairs, leaving the Communists with just two of the nine posts they had held. Last month, at party chief Gennady Zyuganov's urging, the party voted for speaker Gennady Seleznyov and the two remaining Communist heads of committee to resign.
But Seleznyov, cultural committee chief Nikolai Gubenko and Svetlana Goryacheva, the head of the State Duma's committee on women, families and youth, all refused to give up their posts. All three were voted out of the party Saturday at a closed plenum.
Zyuganov accused the trio of "choosing ... the path that was proposed to them by the right wing and centrists," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
"Our colleagues did not have the sufficient will or responsibility to make the decision that was necessary for the party and the country."
Seleznyov said he would not join another party - and he showed no intention of stepping down from the speaker's post. Putin has supported that decision, according to Russian media.
"I considered and I still consider that a big mistake was made, maybe to some extent a tragic one," Seleznyov said after the party vote Saturday. "I will be independent now and will continue to help ordinary communists."
Zyuganov denied rumors of a looming split.
"I declare one more time that the party is indivisible. There will be no split," he told reporters.
Like other political parties in Russia, the Communists long refrained from criticizing Putin, and they have supported many of the government's initiatives in the legislature. But they have recently stepped up their opposition, casting themselves as champions of a strong Russia.
Zyuganov said that the plenum had adopted a declaration on national security, including the dismissal of the arms reduction treaty signed Friday as "a full, unconditional capitulation by Russia," ITAR-Tass reported. He said that the document called for preparations for a vote of no-confidence in the government.