RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT SPEAKER CAUTIONS AGAINST APPLYING DOUBLE STANDARDS TO TERRORISM

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BRUSSELS, October 25 (RIA Novosti) - Sergei Mironov, Speaker of the Federation Council, or Russia's upper house of parliament, deems it unacceptable to apply double standards to terrorism.

"I've called the NATO Secretary General's attention to the unacceptability of double standards in the fight against terrorism and to the unacceptability of dividing terrorists into good and bad," Mr Mironov said to the media after his meeting in Brussels Monday with the chief of the trans-Atlantic alliance, Jap de Hoop Scheffer. "Terrorists will be terrorists, whatever ideas and banners they might use as a cover," the speaker of the upper Russian parliamentary house pointed out.

It is inadmissible that European states should show hospitality to leaders of terrorist organizations operating in Russia and that they let them take part in all kinds of workshops and symposiums, Mr Mironov pointed out. He was referring primarily to the Chechen separatist leaders Ahmad Zakayev and Ilias Akhmedov, with the former granted political asylum in the United Kingdom and the latter harbored by the United States. "We should begin with a simple definition of what terrorism is about and who can be classified as terrorist, introducing the notion[s] into national legislation," he pointed out.

Mr Mironov received the NATO chief's assurances that the technical upgrading of the alliance's military bases and airfields in the territory of its three new Baltic member states posed no threat to Russia. This is just a matter of airspace control; there is nothing to it that could constitute a hypothetical threat to Russia, he quoted the NATO chief as saying.

Mr Mironov told the media that Scheffer and himself had discussed the whole range of issues related to Russia-NATO interaction, specifically joint counter-terrorism efforts and new objectives for the Partnership for Peace program in the Caucasus and in Central Asia. He said Russia could accept NATO's readjustments provided they are aimed at combating terrorism, drug trafficking and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But if the alliance has some other objectives in mind, it is only natural that Russia should seek clarification.

According to Mr Mironov, cooperation within the Russia-NATO Council's framework has been developing quite positively in recent years. The senior Russian MP reminded his audience that a special parliamentary committee had been set up in the Council a short time ago and that the new unit was instrumental in carrying the relations forward.

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