MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Smolenskaya-Sennaya square, 32/34,
121200 Moscow, G-200,
phone 244-1606
To the attention of the Deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation
S.A. POPOV
July, 20, 2000
Dear Sergei Alekseevich,
in reference to Your appeal to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs of July, 15, 2000, we would like to communicate the following.
On May 16, 2000 the Russian delegation at the session of the UN NGO Committee made a complaint about the political organisation with general consultative status by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) - the Transnational Radical Party.
The essence of our claims against this organisation basically consists of 3 elements.
Last April, at the 56-th session of the UN Human Rights Committee a certain A. Igidov repeatedly spoke on behalf of the TRP. Igidov defined himself a "representative of the Chechen President in Europe and by the UN" and openly called upon for the separation of the Chechen Republic from the Russian Federation. In spite of repeated warnings that it was inadmissible to violate the order of the distribution of NGO materials at the meeting of UN bodies, A. Idigov distributed among the participants of the UN Human Rights Committee session the so-called "Special issue of the representation of the Chechen Republic Ichkeriya by the international organisations". In particular, this issue said that under the condition of the political pressure on Russia A. Maskhadov was ready to take measures to "dismiss the hostages".
Thus, it seems to us that the TRP was carrying out in the UN an activity that cannot be compatible with the goals and principles of the UN Charter and, first and foremost, with the conditions for the consultative relationships among NGO's and ECOSOC.
In an aggressive manner the TRP is fighting for the legalisation of drugs; it also takes part in the illegal drug distribution. TRP leaders and members were many times arrested and prosecuted for these infringements (for example, in Italy and in the USA). The slogan that one can find at the TRP web-site is very significant (www.radicalparty.org) - "Prohibitionism is a crime". It means that the States (that are an absolute majority at the UN, including Russia) that prohibit drugs in order to protect health and welfare of their citizens, are criminal. It should be pointed out that according to the international anti-drug conventions, eradicating of the illegal drug distribution is a "collective duty of all States and to achieve this goal it is necessary to co-ordinate the efforts in the framework of the international co-operation".
And, finally, another fact. In this moment both at the international and the regional levels a number of serious measures are being taken to oppose the spreading of the infantile pornography and prostitution via Internet. In this concern the Transnational Radical Party is launching a campaign against the "odious, condemning and useless legislative measures" aiming to oppose pedophilia in the Internet.
Taking into consideration the above-stated and according to Chapter VII of the ECOSOC resolution 1996/31, the Russian delegation proposed to the members of the NGO Committee to recommend to cancel the consultative status of the TRP by the ECOSOC. A number of countries - China, Algeria, Cuba, India, Bolivia, Columbia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tunis and some others - backed up our proposal (in the UN NGO Committee there are 19 members).
At the same time, according to the policy of constructive co-operation with other UN NGO Committee, we made a compromise with other members of the NGO Committee and agreed not to vote and to approve by consensus the decision to suspend the consultative status of the Transnational Radical Party by the ECOSOC for three years. This decision was taken on June, 23. Therefore, there is no question of "expelling the TRP from the UN", as the appeal of the Moscow TRP branch says, but of the temporary suspension of its consultative relationships with ECOSOC.
Sincerely Yours,
Deputy Minister E. Gusarov.
