Medvedev: Russia-U.S. child adoption agreement must be observed by both sides
MOSCOW. Jan 28 (Interfax) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said that if the Russian-U.S. agreement on child adoption is implemented in the future, both sides should observe its provisions.
"It is a good agreement, our Foreign Ministry and the State Department worked on it quite long. But unfortunately, absolutely surprising things came to light: everything is fine at the level of the federal government but the rules of control over the adopted children implied by the agreement do not work at the level of states," Medvedev said in an interview with CNN, the transcript of which is posted on the Russian government's website.
"Lawmakers in the states, the judicial authorities in the states did not even want to fulfill the agreement," he said.
"We should revise what was done in the legal sense as a minimum. Even if we look into the future, this agreement, if it is implemented in the future, should be observed not only in the territory of Russia but also in the territories of concrete states in the United States. This is the set of problems," Medvedev said.
At the end of last year, Russia adopted a law banning the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens and therefore Russia is terminating the Russian-U.S. agreement on cooperation on child adoption signed in Washington on July 13, 2011.