MOSCOW. April 22 (Interfax) - Russia's State Duma has ratified the Third Protocol Amending the Treaty on Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia.
The treaty was signed in 1976 by the five states that founded the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Two protocols amending the treaty that were approved in 1987 and 1989 allow non-Southeast Asian nations to join the accord.
Russia signed the treaty in 2004.
The third protocol, signed in Hanoi in July 2010, makes the treaty "open for accession by States outside Southeast Asia and regional organisations whose members are only sovereign States subject to the consent of all the States in Southeast Asia," the text of the protocol says, in part.
In answering questions from Duma deputies, Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin, who was introducing the protocol to the lower house, said neither the treaty nor any of the protocols deal with extradition matters.
He said Thailand's extradition of Russian businessman Viktor Bout, a suspected arms trafficker, to the United States "was the result of the U.S. policy of pressure on the Thai authorities, which we qualified as illegal."