Russia to suspend participation in OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, freeze its contributions - Federation Council speaker
MOSCOW. June 19 (Interfax) - The Federation Council and the State Duma will jointly draft a resolution suspending Russia's participation in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and freezing Russian contributions to the organization, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said.
"Colleagues, I would support this. Let's task the committee to work with State Duma colleagues and draft a resolution to suspend our participation and, therefore, the contributions of the Russian Federation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly," Matviyenko said at a Federation Council meeting on Wednesday.
She was responding to a statement by First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee Vladimir Dzhabarov, who said a stance of this kind had been coordinated with the State Duma.
"By the next plenary meeting of our house, i.e. by July 3 this year, it is planned that a Federation Council resolution suspending the participation of Russian parliamentarians in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's activity will be drafted and submitted for consideration. As agreed with the State Duma, a similar resolution will be adopted almost simultaneously at a plenary meeting of the lower house," he said.
The resolution signed by the speakers of both houses of the Russian Federal Assembly will be sent to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly president.
Russia believed that "every principle which [the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly] rested upon has been destroyed" and the Assembly agenda has undergone "total Ukrainization," Dzhabarov said.
"The assembly has been transformed from a forum for equal dialogue into a politicized instrument for purposefully implementing the anti-Russian course," he said.
He referred to the entry denial to Russian delegation members by several countries hosting OSCE Parliamentary Assembly events, such as the United Kingdom, Poland and Canada. Romania denied visas to Russian parliamentarians last week.
"The latest example is Romania's denial of visas to the Russian delegation. Of course, this is the line when we stop tolerating this kind of attitude," Matviyenko said.
She said she hoped the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly is experiencing "temporary confusion, which will pass sooner or later, and it will realize that equal and indivisible security cannot be discussed without Russia."
The Federation Council also adopted a statement at its Wednesday plenary session, which in particular "resolutely condemns the openly destructive attempts of the collective West to block the activity of the Russian delegation" in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.
"Senators believe that the interaction with the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation and the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy need to be returned to the position of unwavering observance of the principle of equality of lawmakers and refusing from creating artificial obstacles in the activity of parliamentary delegations," the statement said.
The Federation Council also called on international parliamentary organizations, as well as parliaments worldwide, to jointly work on strengthening peaceful and mutually advantageous relations between peoples and states, prevention of unilateral sanctions against lawmakers, and promotion of goals and principles of the UN Charter and general recognized international legal norms.
The Federation Council adopted the statement ahead of the International Day of Parliamentarism marked on June 30.