Russia police hold protest leader at EU summit

TOLIATTI, Russia, May 17 (Reuters) Russian police briefly detained one of the organisers of a planned anti-Kremlin protest on the fringes of tomorrow's summit with European Union leaders.

Denis Bilunov, an aide to chess champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov, was released but police confiscated 95,000 roubles he brought with him to cover organisers' expenses, said a statement on Kasparov's Internet site.

Bilunov was held today as he stepped off a train in the Volga river city of Samara, where the protest is to be held.

Police could not immediately be reached to confirm the details.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, and EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at the summit, in a riverside holiday resort near Samara.

Bilunov is executive director of Kasparov's opposition movement, which is helping organise the protest. Kasparov is expected to attend.

Bilunov was the latest of several protest organisers to be detained. New York-based Human Rights Watch today urged EU leaders at the summit to tackle Russia over what it called the harassment of activists trying to organise protests.

''The crackdown in Samara gives visiting EU leaders a firsthand view of Russia's human rights crisis,'' Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

''The Kremlin is reversing all the achievements of the glasnost era.'' Previous protests which Kasparov helped organise, in Moscow and St Petersburg, were broken up by police wielding truncheons.

The Kremlin says the protesters are dangerous extremists who were breaking the law by marching without permission.

Authorities in Samara had originally banned tomorrow's protest but at the last minute they said it could go ahead.

The protesters, who accuse Putin of rolling back democracy, represent a minority view in Russia. Most voters back Putin's firm rule and the economic growth he has overseen.

Reuters SM VP0042