Russia May End Death Penalty

President Boris Yeltsin will commute all death sentences in Russia and is pushing the reluctant parliament to abolish the death penalty altogether, officials said Tuesday.

The presidential commission for pardons has already reviewed the cases of 716 convicts on death row and recommended that they be given either life sentences or 25-year prison terms, said Robert Tsivilev, who heads the presidential department for pardons.

Yeltsin has already commuted more than half of all death sentences in Russia and is expected to finish the process this week.

Â"After the president signs the corresponding decrees, there won't be a single person on a death row in Russia,Â" Tsivilev told NTV television.

Tsivilev said Yeltsin's move would put pressure on the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, to pass a long-delayed bill to ban capital punishment.

Russia promised to scrap the death penalty when it joined the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organization, in 1996. Russia halted executions later that year and no one has been put to death in nearly three years, although courts handed down death sentences until February.

Yeltsin's efforts to formally outlaw capital punishment have been thwarted by Communists and other hard-liners in the Russian parliament who argue that the death penalty is needed to control serious crime. Polls show that a majority of Russians support that view.

Yeltsin's administration will hold a conference on abolishing the death penalty later this week to explain the government's position.