Moscow, May 21 (RFE/RL) -- Russian President Boris Yeltsin said today that the defence of human rights is a top priority of his policy.
Yeltsin made the statement during a meeting at the Kremlin with human rights activist Yuri Orlov. Orlov, a Soviet physicist who became an outspoken critic of the Soviet regime, was arrested in 1977 and later expelled from the Soviet Union. He now lives in the United States. Yeltsin met Orlov on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the death of Andrei Sakharov - the world-famous dissident, who, like Orlov began his career as a physicist.