WASHINGTON (AFP) - A key US lawmaker announced Wednesday she had met with a group of Russian journalists and opposition figures and called on President Barack Obama to step up human rights pressure on Moscow.

"From Moscow, to Tehran, to Pyongyang, to Havana, it is time for this administration to put human rights -- and not diplomatic niceties -- on top of America?s priority list," said Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said journalists were "an endangered breed in Russia," subject to "increasing and deeply disturbing harassment, violent intimidation and murders."

And she charged that the Kremlin was "dragging the Russian people back into the tyrannical abyss" after progress on democratic reforms after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Her comments came three weeks after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Russia to take a stronger line on rights abuses, saying it was time for the government to speak out against killings and wrongful detentions.

Clinton was pressed on the second day of her visit to Russia to respond to the failure of the authorities to find the killers of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the imprisonment of ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Russia has failed to find the killers of Politkovskaya three years after she was shot dead in the stairwell of her apartment block in central Moscow. Clinton appeared to raise concern that suspects could be being protected.

Khodorkovsky is another cause celebre of Russian rights activists, who allege he has been jailed for daring to finance opposition parties. The authorities however insist he is guilty of grave financial crimes.

Ros-Lehtinen declined to provide a list of the Russians she met, with a committee aide citing concerns about their welfare upon returning home.