A Russian diplomat who allegedly struck a police officer while driving drunk should waive diplomatic immunity and face criminal charges, New York lawmakers said yesterday.

In a letter to the President Putin, Rep. Anthony Weiner said the Russian attache, Ilya Morozov, should not be protected from police charges by diplomatic immunity. “In the United States we have a process for determining facts and assigning responsibility,” Mr. Weiner wrote. “Either permit Mr. Morozov to face a trial or send him home.”

Police say Mr. Morozov, 28, was driving a car with diplomatic license plates Saturday night when he swerved past orange police barricades onto a closed section of the FDR Drive and struck an officer, who was directing traffic. The officer was treated for a sprained knee at Cornell University Hospital, police said.

Mr. Morozov faces seven summonses, ranging from drunk driving to failure to comply with a lawful order by a police officer.

“The crimes Mr. Morozov is accused of committing are very serious, and without his diplomatic immunity he would be facing jail time and fines,” Mr. Weiner wrote.

In a separate letter, also sent yesterday, the commissioner of the New York City Commission for the United Nations, Consular Corps, and Protocol, Marjorie Tiven, asked the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, to urge the State Department to press the Russian Federation to waive Mr. Morozov’s immunity, a spokesman from the mayor’s office said.

Mr. Morozov was initially brought to an Upper East Side police precinct, but was not arrested after police determined his diplomat status. Police alleged he had been drinking.

“Ordinarily, a motorist in a similar situation would have been arrested. He was not,” the Police Department’s top spokesman, Paul Browne, said yesterday. Without diplomatic immunity, Mr. Browne said, Mr. Morozov would be facing charges for drunk driving and assault on a police officer.

Yesterday, a spokeswoman for the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations said she could not comment on the incident, since the mission was still investigating it. “We are expecting the official information and we haven’t received that,” the spokeswoman said.

One diplomat at the Russian mission, who declined to be named, said yesterday that Mr. Morozov – who took up his post as an attache last summer – was working as usual at the mission. Referring to the request by New York lawmakers that his status be reviewed, the spokesman said he thought it was “highly unlikely” that Mr. Morozov’s diplomatic immunity would be waived.