"Russia has already started sliding towards an ecological catastrophe," said Alexei Yablokov, an academic, a prominent activist and expert on nuclear safety who once served as adviser to Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin.

"A clear sign of this situation is the demographic crisis" currently facing Russia, which loses 800,000 inhabitants every year, argued Iablokov.

Ecological problems play an "enormous" part in the rising death toll, he said, claiming that between 300,000 and 350,000 deaths each year were caused by environment-related concerns such as water, air and "secret radioactive" pollution.

"No other country in the world has seen its life expectancy fall in the last 20 years, but Russia has," observed Yablokov, an acclaimed scientist with a number of published works in the United States, Germany and Japan. He also noted that Russia's death rate surpassed its birth rate in 2003.

According to the federal statistics service, Russian males have an average life expectancy of just 58.6 years. That's less than the age of retirement, observes the Green party leader. Females on average live to 72.

Well-established environmental organisations such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) have already signed cooperation agreements with Russia's fledgling Green party, whose formation on Sunday was timed to coincide with World Environment Day.

Asked about his party's hopes of survival in a country whose parliament is overwhelmingly dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, Yablokov said the Greens aspire to becoming "the democratic wing" of Russian society.

"For as long as the Kremlin continues to pursue a policy...of reducing the democratic space of our society...all the more people will turn towards us," he said.

The Greens must register by the end of the year or early 2006 to take part in Russia's next legislative elections, scheduled in 2007.

Under a new law, parties entering parliament under proportional representation must gather a minimum seven percent of the vote to win seats. Previously, the threshold was five percent.

To be able to participate, parties must also have 50,000 registered members, up from 10,000 under the old rules.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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