MOSCOW, July 16 (Interfax) - The reaction of U.S. senators to an as yet unsigned Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations bill in Russia cannot but cause surprise, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said reading a statement released to Interfax Friday.
The U.S. Senate passed an amendment a few days ago to a foreign aid bill under which the United States would discontinue aid to Russia if the Russian president signs the bill into law.
It is in the interests of both Russia and the United States "to develop fruitful, mutually beneficial partnership and cooperative relations based on equality and mutual respect, without attempts at imposing one's own vision of the world as a kind of standard," the Foreign Ministry statement stated.
"It should long be clear that various conditions and linkages are counterproductive," it read.
The bill, passed by both houses of the Russian parliament, will not reach Russian President Boris Yeltsin for signing before "a thorough analysis in his headquarters for consistency with the constitution and other legislation and also Russia's international human rights commitments," the statement read.
Russia "remains committed to democratic values. In today's world we are interested as deeply as anybody else to maintaining inter-confessional peace and protecting the rights of believers who make up over 53% of the population," it read.
New legislation on religious confessions is needed because totalitarian sects and pseudo-religious groups such as Aum Shinrikyo and the Great White Brotherhood have stepped up their activities over the last few years, leading to breakup of families, children dropping out of schools and bring harm to the health of cult followers, the statement claimed.
The bill was dictated not only by the need to put on a legal footing the relations between non-traditional confessions and the state, it stated. "Under pressure mounted by public opinion, especially in outlying regions, resistance to the activities of these confessions used to take ugly anti-constitutional forms," the statement said.
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Johnson's Russia List
#1060
18 July 1997
djohnson@cdi.org
