Yeltsin to End Death Row, Official Says

President Boris N. Yeltsin plans to commute all death sentences in Russia as the country moves toward eliminating capital punishment, an official said Friday.

Yeltsin wants the cases of the roughly 300 convicts on death row to be reviewed by the end of May, said Robert Tsivilev, who heads the presidential department for pardons.

The convicts will receive either life sentences or 25-year prison terms, Tsivilev said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Russia promised to scrap the death penalty in January 1996 when it joined the Council of Europe, a human rights organization. Russia halted executions later that year, and no one has been put to death in nearly three years, but the courts continued to hand down death sentences until February.

Yeltsin’s efforts to formally outlaw capital punishment have been thwarted by Communists and other hard-liners in the Russian parliament, who argue that the death penalty is needed to control serious crime.