TRP/O.Dupuis on Rogozin's invitation of EU Parliament to observe the "referendum"

CHECHNYA. DMITRI ROGOZIN INVITES THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT TO ENDORSE THE REFERENDUM OF DEAD SOULS! AN ACT OF ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE CYNICISM!

Brussels, 7 March 2003. In a letter dated 21 February 2003, Mr Dmitri Rogozin, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, has invited the European deputy and Chairman of the ad hoc Delegation for Chechnya, Mr Reino Paasilina, to visit Chechnya to observe the referendum that the Kremlin has planned for 23 March.

Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and Member of the European Parliament:

"Mr Rogozin certainly has a nerve. While other Russian officials have continually prevented the ad hoc Committee of the European Parliament from visiting Chechnya over the last few years, he has invited Mr Paasilina, the Chairman of the ad hoc Committee, to travel to Chechnya to observe and consequently to endorse a referendum decided and organised by the Moscow authorities against the wishes of the legitimate authorities of the Republic of Chechnya.

It goes without saying that it would be absolutely unacceptable for our Parliament even to dream for a moment of making itself an accomplice of the Russian authorities by agreeing to take part in this referendum of dead souls, in this farce of democracy in which tens of thousands of Russian soldiers will vote in place of the very people they murder every day, in place of those who they imprison and torture every day, in place of the hundreds and thousands of Chechens who have been driven into exile."

www.radicalparty.org

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Olivier Dupuis
Member of the European Parliament
http://www.radicalparty.org/
tel. +32 2 284 7198
fax +32 2 284 9198