MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS/. The Russian and Turkish national delegations are prepared for constructive cooperation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Speaker of the Russian Federation Council (upper house) Valentina Matviyenko told reporters on Tuesday following meeting with Speaker of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly (parliament) Mustafa Sentop.
"We discussed not only a whole array of bilateral relations. We also spoke about cooperation and our coordinated efforts on international parliamentary platforms. In particular, we are committed to constructive cooperation between national delegations in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). A lot has to be changed there," she said.
Matviyenko noted that parliamentary ties between Russia and Turkey had intensified recently acquiring a new quality.
At the end of the meeting, Matviyenko and Sentop signed the regulations of the bilateral High-Level Inter-Parliamentary Commission. "This is not just the signing of a certain formal document. It is a high-level commission. This indicates that our cooperation reached a new level," the Federation Council speaker pointed out.
She stressed that cooperation between Russia’s Federal Assembly (bicameral parliament) and the Turkish parliament would be under the personal supervision of the speakers of both houses of the Russian parliament and of the speaker of Turkey’s parliament. "We will meet, the three of us, to determine the prospects for cooperation. I believe this marks a certain historical period in the development of Russian-Turkish parliamentary cooperation," Matviyenko said.
On June 26, participants in the PACE session approved a resolution fully ratifying the Russian delegation’s credentials. According to head of the Unified European Left Group at PACE, Tiny Kox of the Netherlands, Russia remains in PACE as a full-fledged member without any restrictions. Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Georgia and Poland were strongly opposed to Russia’s return to PACE.