Yeltsin Aide Denounces Foreigners, Urges Curbs

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s new national security advisor said Thursday that Russia should tighten its entry requirements for foreigners and ban some religious groups, including the Mormon Church, as threats to the state.

Retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, who was brought into the government after finishing third in the June 16 presidential election, made the remark in an appeal to Russian nationalists to back Yeltsin in Wednesday’s runoff against his Communist challenger.

The statement, greeted by applause from Lebed’s audience of nationalist supporters, was the most controversial made in his new post. It carries the risk of keeping liberal democratic voters away from the polls and thus helping Communist candidate Gennady A. Zyuganov in a close race.

Lebed told his audience that many foreigners come to Russia only to steal. He also said the expansion of Western movies and “foreign” religious cults into post-Soviet Russia is a “central” issue of national security.

“We have the established, traditional religions--Russian Orthodox, Islam, Buddhism,” he said. “As to all these Mormons, Aum Supreme Truth [a Japanese cult suspected in last year’s fatal gassing of the Tokyo subway], all this is mold and scum that is artificially brought into our country with the purpose of perverting, corrupting and breaking up our state.”

Inexplicably, Judaism was not on his list of “traditional” religions in a country with the world’s third-largest Jewish population. Nor was it clear why he singled out Mormons, who have gained 3,700 converts in Russia since the Soviet breakup of 1991.

“They are Russian. They love their country,” Mormon Church spokesman Clayton Newell said of the converts in a telephone interview from Salt Lake City.

Yeltsin outpolled Zyuganov 26.6 million votes to 24.2 million, out of 74.5 million cast in the first round. Perhaps to get many of Lebed’s 11 million voters behind him, the president has allowed the new security czar to sketch a broad definition of his powers.

Lebed’s real authority, however, will be tested only after the runoff.

The retired paratrooper’s remarks Thursday, more xenophobic than recent statements by the Communists, could jeopardize a hoped-for Yeltsin endorsement from the fourth-place finisher, liberal economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky, who got 5.5 million votes.

“What is Lebed trying to do? Build another Iron Curtain?” Valery V. Borshchev, a member of parliament from Yavlinsky’s party, asked in an interview.

As the campaign entered its final days, Zyuganov announced Monday that, if elected, he would form a government made up of all of Russia’s competing political forces.

Yeltsin countered Thursday with a written appeal urging Zyuganov supporters “not to vote against the new way of life.”