Naryshkin: Incumbent PACE working for goals at odds with Council of Europe Statute
MOSCOW. May 6 (Interfax) - Russia's decision to suspend contacts with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for this year has proven to be right, State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin has said.
"Regretfully, we have been watching PACE undergo degradation for years. It is a reputational danger for decent people to stay there," Naryshkin wrote in an article published by the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Friday.
Not only Russia but also many politicians in the West can see that "the incumbent Assembly has been working for goals, which are at odds with the provisions of the Council of Europe Statute," he said.
"Instead of uniting countries on the continent, it is doing everything to separate them from Russia, to erase the memory of 20 years of rapprochement experience, and to push them into a fettering relationship with the United States. This policy, which is unnatural for democratic Europe, creates a risk of PACE's transformation into its opposite or simply its disappearance as useless," the State Duma speaker wrote.
Naryshkin wondered who would need to dismantle PACE and why.
"Its behavior of the kind leads to the breakup of the very Council of Europe. If this is the primary objective, then it would be premature for the Russian delegation to return to the assembly hall in Strasbourg. This means that our decision to suspend contacts with PACE for this year has been correct. It is pointless to enter a degrading building, from which the spirit of democracy, dialogue values and the sense of responsibility to European peoples is disappearing," the speaker said.
