Kudrin holding consultations on new party, no agreements reached as yet - newspaper
MOSCOW. Dec 26 (Interfax) - Former Vice-Premier and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has begun consultations on forming a new party, the newspaper Kommersant wrote on Monday.
"I do not hold any negotiations. I hold consultations with a broad range of people, but no agreements have been reached as yet," Kudrin told the newspaper.
Boris Nadezhdin, who quit the Right Cause Party to join the new project, reported the consultations earlier. He said the new entity would be based on the former Union of Right Forces.
Kommersant recalled that Kudrin stayed away from parties and even had sporadic altercations with United Russia when he was the finance minister. Being a non-party member, he freely commented on political issues, it said.
"The society must regard the election as a review of the work of the authorities, and the election must be free and fair and represent all the leading political forces," Kudrin said at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum in February 2011.
Kudrin told reporters at the Saturday rally in Moscow that it would be expedient to form a new unified democratic Party. "I do not say that I want to head this party but I will promote it," he said.