Bid to simplify admission of breakaway republics flops in Russian Duma

RIA news agency
11 Mar 05

Moscow, 11 March: The State Duma has turned down a bill which would
have made it easier to admit new constituent parts to the Russian
Federation. The chamber was examining the bill in its first reading.

Altogether 91 deputies voted for the bill, with 34 votes against and
one abstention. Three hundred votes were needed to pass it.

The draft law would amend the federal constitutional law “On procedures
for admission to the Russian Federation and the formation of a new
subject of the federation” and simplify procedures for admission of
autonomous entities in former Union Republics as new subjects of the
Russian Federation.

Amongst other things, the bill proposed dispensing with the need to
conclude an international treaty with the foreign state to which the
autonomous entity belongs.

The bill envisages that the main condition for admission of a new
subject of the federation would be an expression of will by the people
inhabiting that autonomous entity.

Deputies from the Motherland faction tabled the bill.

The authors of the bill argue that simplification of admission
procedures is justified by the recently increasing attempts by
certain former Union Republics, including Georgia and Moldova, to
impose their sovereignty on unrecognized republics like Abkhazia,
Ajaria, South Ossetia, and the Dniester Moldovan republic.

“The problem is compounded by the fact that accusations of backing
‘separatism’ in the unrecognized republics are not infrequently
levelled against Russia,” an explanatory note accompanying the
bill says.

Presenting the draft law, one of its authors, the Motherland deputy
Andrey Savelyev, noted that the bill was designed to restore the
Soviet Union. “We must take a bold step towards the reunification of
the USSR,” Savelyev said.

[A report by ITAR-TASS news agency, in Russian, 1104 gmt 11 Mar 05,
added: “The parliamentary majority declined to support the basic
principle of the bill. A representative of the relevant committee,
Yuriy Konev, said the adoption of this document could upset
Russia’s territorial integrity and result in the establishment of
‘pseudo-sovereignty for autonomous entities’. ‘This contradicts
international law,’ he concluded.”

This report added Azerbaijan to the list of former Soviet republics
which were said to be putting pressure on their unrecognized breakaway
republics – in this case Nagornyy Karabakh.]