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PACE chief to meet with Russia’s lower house leadership next week

Pedro Agramunt is due to pay a working visit to Moscow on September 6-7

PACE President Pedro Agramunt EPA/ATTILA KOVACS

PACE President Pedro Agramunt

© EPA/ATTILA KOVACS

PARIS, August 31. /TASS/. President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Pedro Agramunt is due to pay a working visit to Moscow on September 6-7 accompanied by the leaders of the Assembly’s five political groups, the organization said on its website on Wednesday.

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"The delegation is due to meet the Speaker of the State Duma Sergey Naryshkin, as well as other leading members of the Russian parliament," the statement reads.

The PACE chief has visited Russia several times this year. In May, he attended a session of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in St. Petersburg. In late June, he took part in a session of the General Assembly of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) in Moscow. He noted that Russia is an important member of the Council of Europe.

Russia’s delegation at PACE was deprived of its key rights in April 2014 over developments in Ukraine and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. In 2015, PACE voted twice on a possibility of restoring the Russian delegation’s powers but the restrictions remain in force. Russia is stripped of the right to vote and take part in the PACE governing bodies and its monitoring activities.

Owing to these restrictions, the Russian delegation suspended its participation in the PACE work until late 2015. The leadership of the Russian delegation has repeatedly said it would return to PACE only if all the sanctions were lifted. In January 2016, Russia refused to bid for confirming its powers this year.

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