Russia hopes OSCE Parliamentary Assembly will not repeat PACE mistakes, Russian Duma speaker says

MOSCOW, February 12 /TASS/. Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of the Russian State Duma lower house of parliament, expressed hope on Thursday that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe /OSCE/ would take a different attitude to the Russian delegation and would not repeat the "shameful" mistakes of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe /PACE/. "It is absolutely impossible to repeat the mistakes of another Parliamentary Assembly -PACE," Naryshkin told Ilkka Kanerva, the president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, at a meeting on Thursday. PACE’s January session extended sanctions against the Russian delegation depriving it of the right to vote and participate in the organization’s leading bodies till April. Russia, in turn, suspended all contacts with PACE till the end of 2015. "In my view, it is an infamous chapter in the PACE activities. It is a disgrace for European democratic traditions. PACE was led by the nose by aggressively-minded and Russophobic deputies and inflicted a very serious political damage on itself," Naryshkin stressed. "I hope that you are not going to repeat these mistakes at PACE," the Russian State Duma speaker added. Russia hopes it will continue working at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly constructively and will have equal rights with the other OSCE delegations. "We highly appreciate the role of this organization/OSCE/ and its Parliamentary Assembly. We are deeply convinced that its role is bound to increase under the current circumstances," Naryshkin stressed. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly will meet in Vienna on February 18-20. "It is clear that the Ukraine crisis will be in the focus of attention…I do hope that we will be able to begin our work to make our parliamentary contribution to the Ukraine settlement," Naryshkin concluded. Read more