Dialogue with PACE is positive - Volodin
MOSCOW. Jan 25 (Interfax) - The Russian parliament does not have problems communicating with Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said.
"We don't have problems communicating with Mr. Jagland or with the PACE administration," Volodin told reporters on Thursday in response to a question from Interfax.
He also said that dialogue with PACE is positive.
"Dialogue is going on, it is positive, we are working on the assumption that the outcome of this dialogue should be a change in the regulations protecting the rights of national delegations. All other things are a matter of time," Volodin said.
He also said that "the number of people supporting us on that issue will increase."
Volodin said "the position of Nicoletti as head of the group that gave a report at the session of the PACE bureau was that it is important to us that the rights of national delegations be fixed; the importance of that issue was emphasized."
"As for the [PACE] president , he shares our approaches," Volodin said. "Let's see if the majority in PACE share his approaches on this issue - time will tell - and if he gives up these approaches," he said.
"There are deputies in PACE who represent some countries that are trying to form approaches to decision-making to the detriment of the national delegations, and they have succeeded in that, which is why the Russian delegation left the session, because it was deprived of the right to vote, and that is unacceptable for any parliament," Volodin said.
"If you take the national parliaments that form PACE, none of the parliaments has a practice where one political faction or group is deprived of the right to vote. And in PACE, it became possible because there was a part that adopted the decision de facto by a minority, and then made the entire Parliamentary Assembly a victim of its decision," Volodin said.