MOSCOW/ST. PETERSBURG, April 12 (RIA Novosti) - Prosecutors' threat to suspend the liberal Yabloko party in St. Petersburg for participating in an opposition march is unsubstantiated, a deputy party leader said with nine months left before parliamentary elections.

Prosecutors in St. Petersburg are demanding that right-wing Yabloko eliminate, within a month, violations committed March 3 during the March of Dissent in Russia's second city. Otherwise, the party's local division could be suspended for six months. The warning was made two days before another opposition meeting, this time in Moscow, is held Saturday.

"They are suggesting that we use a 'time machine' and correct violations that allegedly took place over a month ago," Yabloko's deputy chairman Sergei Mitrokhin said ironically.

The city prosecutors said the rally, which involved local Yabloko member Mikhail Amosov, had been sanctioned to proceed at the Finlyandsky railway station in the northeast of the city but was held instead on the central street of the city, Nevsky Prospect.

A new March of Dissent is scheduled for Saturday in central Moscow and will gather supporters and members of the Other Russia that includes the People's Patriotic Union led by former Premier Mikhail Kasyanov, the banned National Bolshevik Party, the United Civil Front led by world chess champion Garry Kasparov and the Republican Party that has been denied registration for the State Duma elections due in December.

Opposition leaders said they expected about 7,000 people to take part in the event but police cited a figure of 1,000. The march will demand a change in the Putin regime and free elections in light of recent legislative initiatives that have raised the minimal number of party members to 50,000, cancelled the "against all" option on the ballot papers, and raised the Duma threshold from 5% to 7%.

The State Duma has also passed new registration rules expanding the grounds for election authorities to deny registration to candidates. Opposition parties also complain of few opportunities to appear on TV and in any other mass media in the country ahead of the elections.

After the Kremlin-backed party, United Russia, came to power in 2003 and the government gained control of the media, Russia's opposition parties have had few instruments for political struggle and little influence on the country's political life.