Russian presidential candidate missing

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, February 08, 2004

Russian presidential candidate missing

A Russian presidential candidate has been missing for three days and his relatives and campaign colleagues will file a missing person's report with Russian police on Sunday.

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A Russian presidential candidate has been missing for three days and his relatives and campaign colleagues will file a missing person's report with Russian police on Sunday.

Ivan Rybkin, former chairman of the Russian Security Council, who was registered by Russian Central Elections Commission as a presidential candidate on Saturday, went missing on Thursday evening, his campaign manager Kseniya Ponomaryova said Sunday.

"We have no information about his whereabouts to this moment," Ponomaryova was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Ponomaryova said that she has signed a letter to the prosecutor-general and to the acting interior minister.

"After 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, the campaign staff will send theseletters out. With Ivan Rybkin's wife Albina, we shall go to the nearest police station and submit an official search request," Ponomaryova said.

Under Russian law, a missing person report can be filed after three days without contact. "But as Rybkin is an officially registered presidential candidate, search will begin immediately,"Ponomaryova said.

Rybkin's wife Albina said that she would submit an official search request to police on Sunday.

Seven Russian politicians will compete for the country's March 14 presidential campaign, which is widely believed to see a landslide victory by Russia's incumbent President Vladimir Putin.

Along with Rybkin and Putin, other contenders include Sergei Mironov, speaker of the upper house of parliament, Sergei Glaziev,co-chairman of the Rodina (Motherland) bloc, Irina Khakamada, former co-chairperson of the Union of Right-Wing forces, and Oleg Malyshkin from the Liberal Democratic Party and Nikolai Kharitonovfrom the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

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