Gorbachev expresses concern at Putin''s response to Beslan attack

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin for limiting voters' ability to elect deputies in the wake of the Beslan school killings, saying people were losing "the right of choice".

Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from March 1985 until December 1991 when the 15-republic Communist superpower was dissolved, was questioned about Putin's swiftly-decided changes during a visit to London.

"I expressed my concern about the election of regional governors being replaced by direct appointment, about elections to the parliament by party list only," Gorbachev said in an interview with Channel Four News.

"Together with the fact that the Upper House is already elected in a similar way ... effectively we are removing from people perhaps their most important right, the right of choice."

Earlier this month, Putin Monday announced a new system of selecting regional leaders that would end voters' right to elect them directly and give the Kremlin a strong role in the process.

Justifying the measures as needed to fight terrorism, he also said that deputies to the lower house of parliament would be elected only on party-lists, ending the current system where independent candidates can contest half of the State Duma seats in local constituencies.

The move came just under two weeks after the Beslan school hostage siege in North Ossetia, in which 339 people were killed, half of them children.

Earlier in the day, Gorbachev had also criticised the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein, calling it "a big mistake" which was "undermining democracy".

He was speaking at the launch of a campaign called ComeClean, which is aimed at making people more aware of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction.

Returning to the theme on Channel Four News, Gorbachev said there was "no justification for the war in Iraq".

Diplomatic, political and other possibilities were not used in order to sort out this situation, but they could have been used to remove Saddam Hussein from the post of president and to achieve regime change," he argued,

"Now I think that the occupation must be ended, sovereignty must be returned to the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people should themselves decide the question of power. And I wouldn't drag out the presence of a coalition of troop from Christian states," he said.

"We have come to the point that in effect we have a clash between Christian states and Iraq, where they are Muslim. It is already growing into something of a religious conflict. That is very dangerous."