A Russian MP has asked an eccentric regional leader to explain his behaviour after claiming on state television that he was visited at home by aliens in a UFO, media reported Thursday.

据媒体本周四报道，俄罗斯一名地区领导人日前在接受当地一个电视台的采访时语出惊人，宣称自己曾在家中遇见搭乘不明飞行物的外星人。一名杜马议员要求他对他的这一行为做出解释。

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) is pictured speaking with the president of Kalmykia Kirsan Ilyumzhinov during their meeting in the Moscow's Kremlin, in 2006.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of the Buddhist¹ Kalmykia region of southern Russia and president of the World Chess Federation² (FIDE世界国际象棋联合会), announced without apparent iron（讽刺，反语） on a high-profile chat show he had met the aliens in 1997.

In an equally bizarre（奇异的） twist, Andrei Lebedev, an MP for the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, has now written to President Dmitry Medvedev raising fears that secret information could have been disclosed（揭露，公开） in the close encounter.

"I ask you to say if the head of Kalmykia has made an official report to the Russian presidency³ about his contacts with representatives of an alien civilisation," he said, quoted by tabloid⁴（小报，文摘） Komsomolskaya Pravda and other media.

"Is there an established procedure of informing about such contacts by high ranking people who have access to secret information like Ilyumzhinov?

"And did he in the course of his seemingly innocent conversation disclose secret information?"

Ilyumzhinov had said in his comments, broadcast in late April, that the aliens appeared in a transparent⁵ tube on the balcony of his apartment in Moscow.

"I was reading my book, watching television and had almost fallen asleep. Then I felt that someone was calling.

"I would not have believed it, if I had not had three witnesses -- my driver, my minister and my aide," he said.

This is not the first time the chess-mad leader has spoken of extraterrestrial（地球外的） encounters. He had earlier claimed to have been shown round a UFO in 2001.