Gorbachev urges Russia poll re-run amid protests

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for Russia's elections to be re-run due to fraud, as the opposition vowed new rallies contesting the results despite mass arrests. Police threw a huge security cordon around the square in central Moscow which saw the latest protest on Tuesday night to prevent a new rally, as the opposition called for a mass gathering near the Kremlin on Saturday. A handful of arrests were reported in Moscow on Wednesday as police cordoned off central squares, while some 70 people were detained in a third night of rallies in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg. The wave of protests and a loss of support in the parliamentary elections have provided Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with an unexpected challenge as he prepares to return to the Kremlin in 2012 presidential polls. Amid growing international alarm over the claims of vote rigging, Gorbachev said the results of Sunday's poll should be invalidated and new elections held due to "numerous falsifications and rigging." "The results do not reflect the will of the people," Gorbachev, president when the Soviet Union collapsed two decades ago, told the Interfax news agency. "Therefore I think they (Russia's leaders) can only take one decision -- annul the results of the election and hold new ones." Putin's United Russia party won the polls with a reduced majority, amid signs his once-invincible popularity might be waning. The opposition says his party's performance would have been even worse in free elections, with both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressing "serious concern". German Chancellor Angel Merkel on Wednesday also called on Russia to clear up the reports of violations and to allow protesters to have their say on the streets. Germany "expects that Russia will live up to its democratic obligations as a constitutional state," Merkel said through a spokesman. "The way the Duma (Russian parliament) vote was carried out was, in some places, a worry."  French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe voiced concerns over the arrests of opposition protesters. "We are worried by the arrests and detentions that are increasing since the elections results have been known," Juppe told reporters on the sidelines of talks among NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. And US State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters: "We've expressed our concerns about the treatment of all those being arrested who were exercising their rights to peaceful protest." Putin has yet to make any comment about the demonstrations, which commentators have described as the biggest opposition rallies since the chaotic early 1990s just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian strongman formally filed his application to stand for the presidency with the central election commission on Wednesday but television pictures only showed him smiling enigmatically. The parliament polls were seen as a litmus test of Putin's popularity as he prepares to take the Kremlin from his protege Dmitry Medvedev and embark on a new six year mandate. Activists say some results stretched all credibility, such as United Russia's polling 99.50 percent in the Caucasus region of Chechnya and almost all the residents of a Moscow psychiatric hospital voting for the party.  Internet-based protesters vowed further demonstrations in the days to come, despite a warning by police that participants in unsanctioned protests would be arrested. A group "for honest elections" said on its Facebook page that a new demonstration would take place on Revolution Square in central Moscow on Saturday. More than 17,000 members of the Facebook group have already promised to attend. But a Moscow city government official told private Dozhd television that the square may be closed on Saturday because of urgent repairs on a burst water pipe. Police said 550 people were detained in Tuesday's rally in Moscow with another 200 held in Saint Petersburg. Many were released but Moscow Echo radio said six of those detained were given jail terms of up to 15 days. The authorities were caught by surprise when the first opposition rally on Monday evening attracted thousands. Influential opposition blogger Alexei Navalny, who coined the slogan "swindlers and thieves", was among those arrested and was sentenced Tuesday to 15 days in jail.  State television news has virtually ignored the demonstrations, and the news bulletins on Channel One did not contain a single mention of the protests all day. But with the authorities clearly nervous, police said that more than 51,000 police were guarding the city streets, among them 2,000 army conscripts, in a heightened security regime.