Mr. Chaika is among the delegates of a 26th conference of European justice ministers, underway in Finland's capital.
The Russian conference delegation will focus attention on an initiative to buttress the European extradition treaty basis-in particular, to introduce arbitration and regulation of political reservation concerning asylum granted on political motives, said the minister as he was talking to Russian journalists.
Mr. Chaika announced this Russian initiative during a plenary session. An expert commission will now discuss it.
The minister is not sure the initiative will find approval, and says he cannot make forecasts just now. There is a positive atmosphere round it, however, he remarked.
Apart from the convention and the protocol, Mr. Chaika also signed partnership programs for 2005-06 with Finland's and Italy's Justice Ministries.
Elaborated within the Council of Europe framework, the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, of 1983, and the Additional Protocol, of 1997, regulate interstate contacts for convict extradition. The convention has 57 signatories-almost all European countries, the USA, Canada, Israel and Japan, and the protocol 25.
The convention aims to promote social adaptation of convicts by allowing persons sentenced outside their own country to serve their terms in it, say Russia's Justice Ministry officers.
The convention makes the convict's or his legal representative's consent, and the consent of both involved countries a necessary transfer proviso, with the exception of convicts escaping to another country, and of instances on which a deportation court verdict is available.
Experts forecast about thirty convicted Russian nationals to be transferred from other countries every year, and roughly 75 aliens convicted in Russia transferred to their countries now that Russia has joined the convention.
