LUXEMBOURG, July 7. /TASS/. A senior Russian lawmaker has warned about a widening gap in the approaches to the key matters between the Organizations for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its Parliamentary Assembly and called on President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Liliane Maury Pasquier to do something about this situation.
"I would like to point to the widening gap between the approaches of the organization and its parliamentary assembly to the key issues on the organization’s agenda," Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, said on Sunday addressing a plenary meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s 28th session. "For the first time after World War II, an international organization, namely the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has turned down a Russia-initiated draft resolution on fighting against aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism."
"We are running the risk of repeating a situation of several years ago between the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe," he said. "We must not repeat such a situation in the OSCE in today’s difficult times."
He called on PACE President Liliane Maury Pasquier, who was present at the meeting, to use the instruments she had to remedy the situation within the OSCE PA.
"It is necessary to strengthen cooperation between the organization’s institutions, to strengthen cooperation with the Parliamentary Assembly so that its members finally believe the eight reports by the Special Monitoring Mission which tell the truth that there have never been any Russian heavy weapons in southeastern Ukraine and the entire problem is that disengagement of forces, and this is the key principle of the Minsk agreements, is breached by Kiev only," Slutsky said.
He also noted that the OSCE PA is ignoring "the right of the nations to self-determination that is committed to paper in article 1 of the United Nations Charter in respect of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "Russia is always accused of everything. It is an inadmissible approach. We have to ask now to project the constructive approaches of the organization onto its Parliamentary Assembly," he said.
"We ask your assistance and express our commitment to cooperation with the organization and all of its institutions. But the situation in the Parliamentary Assembly, beginning from today’s rejection of the draft resolution against glorification of Nazism, gives rise to our very serious questions," he added.