MOSCOW - ABOUT 500 anti-Kremlin activists met in Moscow on Sunday to discuss forming a movement called 'Solidarity,' the latest bid to unite Russia's liberals against what they call growing authoritarianism.

The activists gathered in a Moscow hotel in an event whose time and place had been kept a closely guarded secret due to previous attempts to disrupt similar meetings, often by pro-Kremlin youth groups.

Leading opposition figures such as ex-world chess champion Garry Kasparov spoke at the meeting, at which delegates were nominated for a founding congress of the new Solidarity movement scheduled for Dec 12-13.

Activists in the new movement vowed to fight the amendments, which would become the first changes to Russia's post-Soviet constitution if they pass the upper house and two-thirds of regional assemblies, as widely expected.

'We will be one of the only political movements in Russia to stand in defence of the constitution,' Mr Ilya Yashin, one of the activists at the meeting, told AFP.

He added that the founders of Solidarity had chosen the name in part because of the 1980s Polish trade union federation of the same name, which pushed the government of the Soviet bloc country to hold free elections in 1989.

'The victory of our Polish colleagues did much to inspire us,' said Mr Yashin, who also heads the youth wing of Russia's liberal Yabloko party.

Like the original Solidarity, the new movement plans to push for greater democracy, Mr Yashin said, complaining that 'there are no real elections in the country.' Yabloko and other liberal parties are no longer represented in the Russian parliament and receive little coverage in the state-dominated media.

Previous attempts to unify the opposition have stumbled, however, due to disagreements over strategy and personal conflict between opposition leaders. -- AFP

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