- As lawmaker says U.S.-Russia interparliamentary ties remain ‘frozen’
US President Donald Trump has argued that the future of Western civilisation is at stake in a keynote speech in the Polish capital Warsaw.
Holding up Poland as an example of a country ready to defend Western freedoms, he warned against the threats of “terrorism and extremism”.
Criticising Russia, Mr Trump urged Moscow to “join the community of responsible nations”.
Mr Trump is in Poland ahead of a G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
In Warsaw, he addressed a large, cheering crowd from the monument to the 1944 Uprising in the city, on Krasinski Square.
Poland’s conservative government shares Mr Trump’s hostile view of immigration and strong sense of sovereignty.
In the meantime, Russia-U.S. inter-parliamentary ties remain “frozen” and Moscow does not expect any breakthrough in the bilateral cooperation within a new Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) committee on counterterrorism.
Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky told Sputnik Thursday: “we already have met with the U.S. delegation of the OSCE assembly in Vienna.
“We discussed the whole range of questions but it was not a deep and thorough discussion, so I do not have high expectations about our cooperation.
“I consider parliamentary relations between our countries frozen at the moment,” Slutsky said on the sidelines of the summer annual OSCE assembly meeting answering the question whether he expected an effective cooperation with the United States within the new committee.
On Wednesday, OSCE assembly announced establishing the new Ad Hoc Committee on Anti-Terrorism.
Head of Russian delegation to the assembly Pyotr Tolstoy said that the delegation would discuss cooperation within the framework of the new committee with the US partners.
The lawmaker noted that Russia had proved itself as an active member and gained weight within the Assembly.
“I believe that we have made a serious progress and achieved quite a lot within the OSCE assembly.
“We have created an OSCE committee on combating terrorism and we hope that our candidate Nikolay Kovalev will be elected as Vice-President of the OSCE and at the same time he will chair this committee,” Slutsky concluded.
On Wednesday, the 26th Annual Session of the OSCE kicked off in the Belarusian capital bringing together about 300 delegates from North America, Europe and Asia.
The delegates are expected to focus on security, counterterrorism, climate change and human rights issues during the five-day debate.
Additional report from BBC
