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Russian Communists re-elect leader amid disputes

MOSCOW, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Russia's Communist Party re-elected veteran Gennady Zyuganov as its leader on Saturday, but cracks appeared in the ranks with some members suggesting selective cooperation with the Kremlin.

Zyuganov was backed by all but a handful of the 300 delegates at a special Congress, said Gennady Seleznyov, Communist speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, to reporters as he left the Congress.

But the party chief, beaten in the last two Russian presidential elections by Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, came under attack after his 80-minute address from some delegates who wanted a new strategy to boost their electoral chances.

Mikhail Mashkovtsev, governor of the far eastern region of Kamchatka, said Communists should consider cooperating with Putin on "key issues" as he was sure to be re-elected in 2004. An attractive, dynamic Communist candidate was needed for 2008, he said. "Large sections of the population denounce the ills of capitalism, but have no intention of going back to socialism for the moment," he told Russian television stations.

"Our task, a long and difficult one, is to work on society's views for a return to a socialist form of development. You cannot achieve that merely by criticising everything."

The Communist Party gave up its constitutional monopoly on power in 1990, a year before the collapse of Soviet rule. It remains the largest single group in parliament and wins about a quarter of the vote in parliamentary elections.

After an initial period of tacit backing for Putin when he took office in 2000, it is now firmly in opposition. Zyuganov accuses the president of leading the economy to ruin and yielding too much to the United States in foreign policy.

Zyuganov dismissed any talk of a major rift.

"You only get unanimous votes in a cemetery. We all want the same thing," he told reporters after the congress, called to bring party rules into line with a new law on political parties.

He told the party the situation in Russia was "extremely serious and getting worse" and said it was "the essence of nature to make calls in favour of socialism."

Delegates at the closed-door meeting had earlier heard greetings from Putin wishing them a "constructive and creative meeting" and saying Russia's problems needed "the unity of efforts of all positive forces in the country."