ROME, July 5. /TASS/. International commissions of Russia’s and Italy’s upper parliament houses will have their first joint meeting in early October in Moscow, a Russian senior lawmaker said on Tuesday.

"We have agreed with our colleagues in the Italian Senate to switch over from the regime of visit exchanges to the regime of join commissions meetings," Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the international committee of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house, said after his visit to Rome. "A joint commissions meeting implies a one-or two-day session with a clearly defined and structured agenda of four to five blocks, with a rapporteur in each of them. It is important to consider the topics separately."

"The first such joint session will be held in Russia in early October. It will take place in Moscow. Apart from that, our Italian colleagues are supposed to visit one of Russian regions," Kosachev added.

He also said he had invited Italian Senators to visit Crimea. "They did not accept it openly but they did not reject it either," he said.

He confirmed that Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko had invited Italy’s Senate President Pietro Grasso to visit Moscow.

"Our task is to give an impetus to inter-parliamentary dialogue between the upper houses," Kosachev said, adding that international committees of the two countries’ upper houses agreed to support initiatives aimed at strengthening cooperation between Russian and Italian regions, with an eye of convening a relevant conference.

"We spoke about special encouragement of direct contacts between Russian and Italian region in conditions when high-level interstate relations may not be working," the Russian lawmaker added.