Russia will take measures in response if U.S. Congress passes "Magnitsky law" - Russian presidential aide
MOSCOW. June 17 (Interfax) - Russia will take steps in response if the U.S. Congress passes the "Magnitsky law," Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said.
"Clearly, we will take measures in response, which are generally inevitable, but we would like to avoid them. If there is no law, there will be no response measures and, naturally, the atmosphere will immediately improve," Ushakov told reporters before a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama, which is expected to take place at the G20 summit in Mexico on June 18.
Responding to a question from Interfax as to how symmetrical these response measures may be, Ushakov said: Their content is secret."
The Kremlin official said many people in the U.S. administration understand that the adoption of this law will "do a lot of harm to the development of bilateral relations."
The presidential aide pointed out that many countries den entry to undesirable persons, but such decisions are normally not advertised. "It's a very normal situation in international affairs," he said.
"We are now talking about a demonstrative anti-Russian step by the U.S. Congress. They are trying to interpret this law in a broad way, primarily to use this law in cases when the Americans are dissatisfied with Russia's actions, including those taken on the international scene," Ushakov said.
"They are now trying to introduce a new permanent negative element, in the same way as the Jackson-Vanik amendment hung over bilateral relations. It's clear to everyone that it is a negative element," Ushakov said.
"In our contacts with the U.S. administration at all levels, we toughly raise the issue of the unacceptability of 'exchanging' the [Jackson-Vanik] amendment for an anti-Russia 'law named after Sergei Magnitsky," which envisions the introduction of visa and other sanctions under far-fetched 'human rights' pretexts. The U.S. administration needs to be aware that we will have to take measures in response," he said.
The Kremlin official recalled that Russia had to blacklist former and current U.S. administration officials as a reaction to the U.S. decision to deny entry to the U.S. to 11 Russian officials believed to be involved in the "Magnitsky case."
"Those people are involved in high-profile human rights violations, including the torture of prisoners in special prisons created by the Pentagon and the CIA in Guantanamo, Bagram, Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib, Iraq," Ushakov said.
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