The State Duma turned down Deputy Yury Shchekochikhin's motion to ask the Prosecutor General's Office to look into the apartment bomb threat in Ryazan in September, but he will try again to win the Duma's support, his chief of staff said Monday.
The Duma voted 197 to 137, with one abstention, Friday in support of the Yabloko deputy's motion. But 226 votes were needed for approval.
A second attempt to file the request will be made March 29, Alexander Pivovarov, chief of Shchekochikhin's staff, said in a telephone interview on Monday.
The Federal Security Service has maintained that it was a training exercise and the device found in the basement of a Ryazan apartment building Sept. 22 contained no explosives, only sugar.
Reports in several newspapers - including Novaya Gazeta, where Shchekochikhin works - have questioned the FSB explanation and suggested the FSB itself may have been involved in planting the suspected bomb.
Novaya Gazeta cited local FSB officials as saying the sacks planted in the building and discovered by the residents contained the explosive hexagen.
Acting President Vladimir Putin has said the very allegation of FSB involvement is "immoral."
Shchekochikhin's motion asks for the prosecutor's office to answer the following questions: At what stage is the investigation? Have tests of the substance been done? Who gave the orders, and when, to conduct those "training exercises" and were explosives used?
Pivovarov said the motion was supported by the Communists, Agrarians, Yabloko and partly by Fatherland and Union of Right Forces, while no one in the pro-Kremlin Unity or People's Deputy faction voted in favor. Deputies in Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDPR faction and Russia's Regions also tended to vote against it.
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