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Russia calls on OSCE PA to back up ban on sanctions against deputies

Swiss deputy, Filippo Lombardi, the head of the Swiss delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, is planning to submit his own resolution banning sanctions against deputies of any level

MOSCOW, March 14 /TASS/. Russia will seek the adoption of a new draft resolution on impossibility of imposing sanctions against deputies at the annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Tbilisi early in June 2016, Nikolai Kovalev, the deputy head of the Russian delegation at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, said.

"Naturally, the Russian side will insist on its own edition of the resolution proposed by Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, the Russian delegation head. We are going to collect signatures in support of the document. Hopefully, the (OSCE) deputies will hear us," Kovalev added.

He said that Swiss deputy, Filippo Lombardi, the head of the Swiss delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, was planning to submit his own resolution banning sanctions against deputies of any level.

"In fact, he supported our idea contained in the Naryshkin draft, which was submitted to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Finland but was not considered because the Russian delegation had stayed away from that session," Kovalev explained.

"I am going to talk to Lombardi and I will try to persuade him to support our resolution. Then we will see," the Russian parliamentarian said. Kovalev believes that the main difference between Naryshkin’s and Lombardi’s resolutions is that the Swiss draft is smoother and milder.

Kovalev is planning to attend a meeting of the OSCE PA Bureau on April in his capacity as the OSCE Special Envoy on Counter-Terrorism on April 10. The Bureau, Kovalev said, will prepare the agenda for the OSCE PA summer session.

The draft resolution, which Sergei Naryshkin presented at the last year session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, called on the OSCE PA member states to refrain, both individually and at international organizations and within their sovereign powers, from any restrictive measures, namely sanctions, against other member countries. A separate clause suggested giving up personal sanctions against parliamentarians of the member states as measures, which could hinder a full-fledged dialogue and cooperation at multilateral forums, including inter-parliamentary ones.

Lombardi’s draft, which TASS has at its disposal, contains a call to the member states to stick to their commitment to guarantee all PA members free access to participation in all formal meetings, visits, missions and other forms of the Assembly’s activities by issuing visas and travel permissions necessary for entering a country at least for the periods when such events are taking place if that is not forbidden by principles of international law.