The Public Chamber, a consultative body of prominent citizens ostensibly aimed at bridging the gap between the authorities and the public, held its first meeting Saturday, one day after President Vladimir Putin confirmed the chamber's first wave of members.

The first 42 members, who were confirmed by presidential decree Friday, are a mix of religious leaders, doctors, journalists, athletes, artists and businessmen. Notably absent from the list were human rights activists, many of whom have criticized the Public Chamber as window-dressing to legitimize authoritarian Kremlin policies.

Of the initial 42 members, 40 showed up for Saturday's closed-door meeting at the presidential administration offices at Staraya Ploshchad, said Alexander Shokhin, a chamber member and newly elected president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Itar-Tass reported.

Other members include well-known pediatrician Leonid Roshal, Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar, champion gymnast Alina Kabayeva and Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Politika Foundation think tank.

Lazar said that if the Public Chamber continued to meet on Saturdays, he would not be able to attend due to his Jewish faith, Kommersant reported Saturday.

The chamber spent its first meeting discussing how it would nominate its next wave of 42 members, all from national nongovernmental organizations, Shokhin said.

The combined 84 members will then choose a final 42 members from regional NGOs via conferences in each of the seven federal districts.

"The beginning of real work can be expected no earlier than January," Shokhin told Ekho Moskvy radio.

Putin first proposed setting up the chamber in the wake of last year's Beslan school attack. He argued that the chamber should exercise civil control over law enforcement agencies to ensure they combat terrorism effectively and act as a bridge between the authorities and the public.

Under a subsequently passed law, the chamber can issue recommendations to the government and parliament on key issues of domestic policy, pass judgment on bills, request investigations into what it considers breaches of the law and ask for information from government agencies. The government is not required to accept any of the chamber's recommendations.

Kremlin ideologue and deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov told reporters Friday that chamber members would have the power to summon bureaucrats for questioning. "[Bureaucrats] will have to come to them and report," Surkov said, Kommersant reported.

Kremlin critics have said the chamber simply provides a veneer of democracy in the country. The country's most prominent human rights group, Memorial, has said that it will not participate, as has Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

"I'm very happy that there are no human rights activists among the first 42 members, and I hope that they will refuse any requests to join in the future," Lev Levinson, a political analyst with the Institute of Human Rights, said Sunday.

As to who else would be drafted into the chamber, Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said the rest would be "basically marionettes," respected figures in their area of expertise but willing to do what they were told in politics.

Pribylovsky said the primary goal of the chamber might be to urge Putin to remain in power after his second term ends in 2008.