MOSCOW, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Russia will not return to full-scale work with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) until its rules on depriving delegations of their voting rights are amended, a Russian parliament leader said Friday.
"We will not return to PACE until its discriminatory rules which allow to strip a national delegation of its voti
ng rights are canceled," said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, lower house of the Russian parliament.
PACE President Pedro Agramunt had admitted that dialogue between Russia and PACE was necessary and the subject of the nearest discussion will be the question of procedural rules and the participation of the Russian delegation, Volodin said in an interview published in the Russian newspaper Kommersant on Friday.
Russia's delegation at the PACE was deprived of its key rights in 2014 over developments in Ukraine, including the right to vote and take part in the PACE governing bodies and its monitoring activities.
Owing to these restrictions, the Russian delegation suspended its participation in the PACE work until late 2015. Russia did not renew its credentials ahead of the Assembly's 2016 winter session and made its return conditional on the full restoration of its delegates' voting rights.
