MOSCOW - The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Russian President Vladimir Putin not to sign a new bill that would severely restrict non-governmental organizations.

In a letter dated Wednesday, the New York-based group criticized the bill, which has been approved by both houses of parliament, as “deeply flawed.”

“The vaguely worded legal restrictions would empower politicized bureaucrats to interfere in the work of NGOs and derail democracy by denying citizens access to information about political and economic developments,” the committee's director, Ann Cooper, wrote in the letter.

The bill's sponsors said it is necessary to stem terrorism and extremism, but critics see the measure as part of a Kremlin campaign to increase control over society and stem dissent before parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 and 2008.

The draft legislation provides for a new agency to oversee the registration, financing and activities of Russia's more than 400,000 NGOs. It would require stringent, continual accounting before the government, which NGOs worry would draw too many staff and resources from their real work.

The new agency, the Federal Registration Service, and not the courts would determine if an NGO should be dissolved.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday also criticized the legislation, saying it would have an “extremely negative impact” on Russian rights organizations and could result in the closure of foreign-affiliated NGOs.

Since he came to office in 2000, Putin has been accused of rolling back post-Soviet democratic freedoms, imposing state control of national broadcasters and packing parliament with lawmakers loyal to the Kremlin, among other hard-line measures.