"Inostranets" #40 (347), October 17, 2000, page 5

On October 18 the Assembly of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) will examine Russia's demand to suspend the consultative status of the Transnational Radical Party at the UN. The Transnational Radical Party (TRP) is a liberal anticomunist party based in Italy. Its headquarters is located in Rome and three offices more - in New-York, Brussels and Moscow (Russian coordinator of the TRP is Nikolay Khramov). The party has about 5 000 members throughout the world. The TRP reached the international level by the end of 1980s. The radicals initiated the adoption of the UN resolution on the moratorium on death penalty, campaign to defend the autonomy of Tibet, establishment of the international court for military crimes. Since 1995 the TRP has been accredited at the UN as a non-governmental organization with 1st category consultative status (only the Red Cross and the Islamic League have this status parallel with the TRP).

In this April, the representative of the Maskhadov's administration Akhyad Idigov, who turned to be a TRP member, spoke at the session of the Committee for Human Rights in Geneva. He spoke of the violations of the human rights during the second Chechen war. The Committee demanded that Moscow allow an independent investigation in Chechnya. In response Russia's representatives in the UN demanded to withdraw the consultative status from the TRP. Besides that, the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affaires alleged that the radicals support Chechen terrorists and narcomafias (the TRP promotes the legalization of marijuana). In September at the meeting of the UN Committee on non-governmental organizations, Germany, Chile, the USA, France and Romania demanded to close the TRP's case for lack of evidences. Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Russia and the Lebanon voted against this proposition. The final decision is to be taken at the Assembly of the ECOSOC.

Recently the TRP has distributed a statement whish says that Russia's demand "is based on untruthful and insulting accusations", none of which was proved. The radicals' opinion is that Russia's activity is "a reaction to the TRP's campaign to defend human rights and political rights of the Chechen people, and to denounce cruel crimes commited there". Among those who signed the TRP's document are political figures Konstantin Borovoy, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Valery Borshchov, a member of the Italian parliament Alessandra Mussolini-Floriani, a former Prosecutor at the Nuremberg process Benjamin Ferenz, writers and public figures Yuly Rybakov, Yelena Bonner, Vladimir Bukovsky and Andre Glucksmann.