Russian Hard-Liners Denounce Air Strike : Reaction: Nationalists demand troops be recalled from Gulf. Their salvo seems designed to score points against Yeltsin and other pro-Westerners.

Russia’s political struggle resumed in earnest Thursday as reactionaries and nationalists, denouncing the U.S.-led air strike on Iraq, demanded the immediate recall of their country’s warships and sailors from the Persian Gulf.

“Our servicemen have found themselves in the position of hostages,” said Sergei N. Baburin of the right-wing Russian Unity faction.

Jumping on the latest world crisis, Baburin, a leader of die-hard opponents of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, accused the U.S.-led, Kremlin-backed, anti-Iraq coalition of flouting international law by raiding targets in a sovereign land, which many Communists and xenophobes here respect and even admire.

“We have no right to share with these states the responsibility for this flagrant violation,” Baburin told fellow lawmakers, meeting in full session for the first time this year.

“Moreover, we have no right to shield the servicemen of these countries from possible concrete Iraqi actions with the bodies of our soldiers.”

In a statement, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman justified the U.S.-led raid by accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of having ignored “a clear warning” on Jan. 9 from Russia, the United States and two other permanent members of the Security Council, France and Britain.

Wednesday’s air strike was also authorized by past U.N. decisions, the statement said, flatly contradicting the reasoning espoused by Baburin and his allies, who charged that Iraq’s sovereignty had been violated.

“We hope that this time, the Iraqi leadership will listen to the voice of reason and strictly observe the requirements of all resolutions of the U.N. Security Council,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

But it said Baghdad’s public pronouncements showed it had lost touch with reality.

The Russian right’s salvo directed at Moscow’s participation--albeit in a noncombat role--in the coalition against Hussein seemed designed chiefly to score points against Yeltsin and other pro-Westerners in the Russian leadership. The issue should come to a head today.

At Baburin’s insistence, Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan I. Khasbulatov indicated that a Defense Ministry official would be called to speak about the possibility of an “immediate withdrawal” of the small Russian flotilla--an anti-submarine ship and an oiler--in the Persian Gulf. The vessels are there as part of the international effort mounted against Iraq.

The banned National Salvation Front, a crypto-Communist group that has called for Yeltsin’s overthrow, issued a statement expressing solidarity with the Iraqi people and accused Yeltsin of committing “treachery” by siding with the “American aggressors and their allies.” It demanded Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev’s immediate resignation and the end of all Russian participation in the task force.

Less extremist, but also an opponent of Russia’s Western-oriented foreign policy, lawmaker Iona I. Andronov predicted that the conservative-dominated Parliament would be powerless to force the ships’ recall, a move that would badly damage Russia’s campaign to act like other “civilized countries.”

But he said crisis-ridden Russia has no business being involved in the Persian Gulf. “If the Americans wish to go kill Saddam Hussein or somebody else down there, let them do it. But without us,” Andronov said.

Meantime, Yeltsin’s government canceled a recent measure that had delighted many of its anti-capitalist enemies--the limiting of profit margins on some goods and basic foodstuffs like bread, vodka and baby food.

The original edict, which took effect Jan. 1, threw pro-marketeers and Western governments into a panic over new Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin’s apparent retreat from a genuine supply-and-demand economy.

“The reformist wing of the government has gained a victory,” Mikhail Berger, economics observer for the Izvestia newspaper, said of the rollback announced Thursday.

Berger credited two deputy prime ministers, Anatoly B. Chubais and Boris G. Fyodorov, with having persuaded Chernomyrdin, a Soviet-era industrialist who became prime minister one month ago, that too much change had already occurred in Russia for Soviet-style economic decrees to be fulfilled.

First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir F. Shumeiko told the Itar-Tass news agency that after the original decree is redrafted, the only profit limits left in force will probably apply to industries enjoying a monopoly.

The new session of the Supreme Soviet, scheduled to last through June, will provide many likely flash points of conflict between Yeltsin and his foes.

One bone in the throat of the government’s adversaries is the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START II, signed by Yeltsin and President Bush Jan. 3.

It requires Supreme Soviet ratification. After signing START II, Yeltsin called its foes supporters of Hussein who oppose what is good for Russia.

Other grounds for a showdown are Yeltsin’s recent drafting of three high-ranking allies in the Supreme Soviet to fill government jobs, a tactic some Moscow observers believe is meant to deplete the 220-seat legislature of talent or make it an ineffectual sounding-box.

On Thursday, the Supreme Soviet also approved holding a nationwide referendum April 11; the question would call for getting rid of the most potent hotbed of nostalgia for old, Soviet Communist ways, the Congress of People’s Deputies, and replacing it with a U.S.-style division of powers more advantageous to Yeltsin.