ST. PETERSBURG, March 26. /TASS/. Speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house Vyacheslav Volodin has called on European politicians not to hide their heads in the sand as long as Syrian settlement is concerned.

"Obviously, much depends on the United States concerning that matter, but the role of Europe must not be diminished as it was Europe that was the first to be hit by the consequences of what is going on in Syria," he said at a meeting with visiting President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Pedro Agramunt that was held on the sidelines of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

"It means that those politicians who are seeking, like an ostrich, to hide their heads in a safer place and pretend that nothing is happening, that someone else will resolve this situation, do not deserve their places," Volodin stressed.

Having reminded about the recent visit to Syria paid by Agramunt along with a Russian parliamentary delegation, Volodin called on European lawmakers to visit that country more frequently.

"The more private trips, like the one you and your colleagues have recently made, lawmakers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe make to the zone of hostilities to see the situation with their own eyes and do their best to have terrorism uprooted the sooner peace will be established," he said. It is important for us to have European parliamentary structures be involved in this process more actively."

A delegation of Russian State Duma lawmakers along with representatives from PACE and its President Pedro Agramunt visited Syria on March 20-21 at the invitation of Syrian parliament speaker Khadiya Abbas. Over their stay in Syria, the lawmakers met with Syrian President Bashar Assad and had talks at the Syrian parliament. Apart from that, the delegation visited the Russia airbase at Hmeymim where they met with officials from the Russian center for reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria. The Russian delegation included lawmakers from all the four parliamentary factions. Europe was represented by ten lawmakers from Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Belgium.