RUSSIAN MP ON CIS, RUSSIA-UKRAINE RELATIONS, BEREZOVSKY CONTROVERSY

The Commonwealth of Independent States needs urgent though gradual reforms, insists Alexander Lebedev, deputy chairman of the CIS affairs committee of the State Duma, the Russian parliament's lower house. The way they are now, CIS agencies are sluggish and entangled in the red tape, he said to a RIA Novosti news conference. As for Russian contacts with Ukraine, they ought to get on a pragmatic footing, remarked Lebedev. He highlighted the number of secondary Russian-language schools spectacularly shrinking in Ukraine, of late. "If we do not like the developments, Russia's businessmen and government offices ought to take support of such schools on themselves. These agencies should promote the Russian language and culture everywhere outside Russia, for that matter. We cannot shift that duty on other countries," he noted. "Now, if Ukraine wants to set up a Ukrainian-language school in Moscow, it should do the funding at its own expense. No one will have the slightest objections to the arrangement," added the parliamentarian. A Russian-Ukrainian inter-parliamentary commission will gather for session in Moscow in May 2005. It will focus on the so-called "zero option". Ukraine has not ratified a respective agreement to this day, Lebedev pointed out.