Russia's top Communist to try for Kremlin

MOSCOW, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- The leader of Russia's Communist Party has announced that he will run for president in 2008, when Vladimir Putin's second term expires.

Gennady Zyuganov, presenting Communist city council candidates at a Moscow news conference, said, "The party elected me leader, and as the leader I must carry out the party's assignment to run for president. ... If the party assigns me to run, I am ready to run," The Moscow Times reported Tuesday.

Zyuganov, 61, is the second person to throw his hat in the ring, after former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, 47, announced his candidacy last month.

A onetime high school teacher from the Oryol province south of Moscow, Zyuganov rose through the ranks of Communist Party apparatchiks and finally became chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 1993.

In the 1996 presidential election he finished a close second to the incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, but lost in the runoff. With Putin's rise to power, the Communists lost much support, and in the 2000 presidential election Zyuganov came a distant second to Putin.

Zyuganov sat out the 2004 presidential election after the Communists' weak showing in parliamentary elections the previous year, and Putin overwhelmingly won re-election.