Riga- The foreign and domestic policies of the Russian government continued to receive a mauling in the Latvian capital, Riga, Saturday with opposition political figures and international relations experts lining up to criticize the Kremlin at a NATO- sponsored conference.

Speaking Saturday afternoon, Boris Nemtsov, a one-time deputy prime minister of Russia under Vladimir Putin and now a leading opponent of his former boss, said: "Putinism means monopoly. Monopoly means corruption, no competition and no transparency."

"The only way to improve relations with Russia is to democratize Russia," Nemtsov said, adding that television was the most important of the Russian government's "monopolies" to such an extent that even his own mother had been persuaded to back Dmitry Medvedev as president.

He also claimed the Kremlin seriously intends the rouble to overtake the dollar and euro as the main world currency with Moscow as the financial centre of the world.

The previous evening, Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin, was among the critics condemning the "aggression of the Russian regime against an independent Georgia" which he said had been planned since May 2004.

"What is the alternative to a new cold war? It is appeasement - and appeasement leads to a hot war," Illarionov said.

Five presidents were originally slated to appear at the Riga conference but President Adamkus of Lithuania and President Yushchenko of Ukraine both cancelled to deal with pressing domestic matters, leaving presidents Zatlers of Latvia, Ilves of Estonia and Saakashvili of Georgia as the most prominent attendees. dpa