Russia may reach agreement on child adoption with U.S. within two weeks
MOSCOW. June 29 (Interfax) - The Russian-U.S. agreement on child adoption may be signed within two weeks, chief of the Russian Foreign Ministry section for relations with the United States Alexander Zakharov has announced.
"Within a month of close contacts, probably even half a month, if everything goes well," he told reporters on Wednesday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit Washington on July 12-14 and meet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he said.
There have been seven rounds of talks to discuss the text of the agreement. "At the latest round, the final check of the text was conducted, differences were settled and the preparation of the document for signing launched," Zakharov said.
Senior U.S. State Department official Jim Pettit, who also took part in the press conference, added that the latest round mulled technical matters and linguistic differences between the Russian and English language versions of the text.
Deputy head of the Russian Education and Science Ministry department for training and socializing children Sergei Vitelis told journalists that work on the agreement had entered the final stage. "We expect the text to be finalized from the viewpoint of its correlation with the English language text, after which we will send it to our colleagues in the other federal authorities," he said.
After the agreement is approved, U.S. adoption organizations operating in Russia will have to produce documents indicating that "they comply with the agreement on adoptions, and the organizations that will apply for permits will have to get accreditation according to new rules."
Presently Russia has 130,000 adoptable children. Since 1992, U.S. families have adopted over 60,000 children from Russia, and last year they adopted over 1,000.