The Azerbaijan State News Agency

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Ruling party nominates Kremlin chief as Duma speaker

19.12.2011 [16:24]
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Baku, December 19 (AZERTAC). Russia`s ruling United Russia Party, whose majority was reduced in this month`s parliamentary election, on Saturday backed Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin to become speaker of the State Duma (lower house), the Party said.

Naryshkin, 57, whose nomination had been widely expected, will take over from Boris Gryzlov, who quit in a move apparently aimed at cooling public anger over an election opponents say was rigged in United Russia`s favor.

The speaker`s post is seen as a nominal one in the top-down "vertical of power" designed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is expected to return to the Kremlin after a presidential election next March 4.

Naryshkin, like Putin a native of St Petersburg, worked in the 1980s in the economic attaché department of the Soviet embassy in Belgium. He speaks fluent English and French.