New PACE management seeks to renew relations with Russia - Naryshkin
MOSCOW. June 29 (Interfax) - Russian State Duma Chairman Sergei Naryshkin said that he sees the aspiration of the new administration of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to reinstate the organization's relations with Russia.
"Your second visit in the past month and a half to us in Russia proves the aspiration of the new administration of the Parliamentary Assembly headed by you to normalize relations with the Russian delegation," Naryshkin said at a meeting with PACE President Pedro Agramunt in Moscow on Wednesday. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the 47th session of the General Assembly of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC).
In addition, Naryshkin said that Moscow highly values the personal stance of the Assembly's new president, his adherence to parliamentarism and the values of dialogue. "The dialogue which is necessary in our hard times," he added.
He said it is not that simple to remedy the situation in which PACE came to be after divesting the Russian delegation of main authorities, he said. "Even if we return to PACE, there is no guarantee that a similar situation will not occur regarding any other parliamentary delegation," he said.
He noted that the established procedures and "sometimes strange renditions of the Statute of the Council of Europe lead to deprivation of rights of entire national delegations."
Naryshkin recalled that even before the crisis, in 2004, he warned his colleagues about such threats in his speech at the Assembly. Back then, he proposed to conduct effective, not decorative, organizational reform, he said. "Instead of error recovery, unfortunately, we saw further aggravation of bureaucratic hindrances," he said.
Naryshkin cited willingness to continue meetings and consultations with the Assembly's administration, including the heads of political groups. "But one of the conditions of collective success, I believe, will be the return to the propositions which had been voiced by our side," he said.
