MOSCOW, March 2 (Xinhuanet) -- An official with the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the human rights report published by the US Department of State adopts double standards and is politically biased.

    "The whole report appears to be politically biased," said an official with the ministry's information and press department, referring to the 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released by the United States in Washington Monday.

    "Unfortunately, the content of the annual human rights report by the US Department of State again gives grounds for saying that double standards are characteristic of the American approach to this important subject," the unnamed diplomat was cited by Interfax news agency as saying.

    The official noted that the US assessment on Russia could "on no account be called objective," because the judgment are mainly based on arbitrary interpretation of facts and sometimes even rumors.

    The report once again ignored the human rights problems in the United States itself, said the diplomat, citing the inhuman treatment of inmates in US prisons in Iraq and the continued discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities. Enditem