MOSCOW. April 15 (Interfax) - Russian human rights activists worry that many Russian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will be closed down in the near future as they will be unable to timely submit reports on their activities in the past year to the Federal Registration Service.

"Today is the deadline for submitting the reports on the NGOs' activities in 2007. Starting from tomorrow, the Registration Service will have the right to file thousands of lawsuits with Russian courts to have all public associations and nonprofit organizations that have not submitted reports on their activities for 2006 and 2007 disqualified and removed from the register of legal entities," the interregional association of rights protection organizations Agora said in a statement on Tuesday.

"This law should be not amended but abolished," Moscow Helsinki Group leader Lyudmila Alexeyeva told Interfax earlier.

"This is a harmful and undemocratic law," Alexeyeva said.

She suggested that, instead of protecting people's rights, many NGOs spend most of their time on paperwork, drawing up reports to the Registration Service.