MOSCOW. June 8 (Interfax) - The Communist faction in the State Duma is dissatisfied with the answer received from the Foreign Ministry about the deployment of a NATO transit post near Ulyanovsk.
"Everything in the reply of the foreign policy authority seems to be written smoothly but the explanation is simple - the great and mighty Russian language in which one word may have up to one hundred connotations and synonyms, therefore even a poor situation can be described in neutral tones," Communist Party Central Committee secretary Valery Rashkin told Interfax on Friday.
He said that the Foreign Ministry sent a reply to the Communist Party Central Committee protest against the deployment of the NATO base in Ulyanovsk issued in May. He said that the Foreign Ministry reply claims that solely non-military NATO cargos are in question and that their transportation will be purely commercial.
He quoted the part of the Foreign Ministry's reply that says that "handling and all other operations will be conducted under strict control by Russian customs bodies to prevent the route from being used for drug trafficking among other goals."
"What bothers me is that customs also strictly controls other parts of the country as well but the volume of drug trafficking and the number of addicts are growing in geometrical progression despite this so-called control," Rashkin said.
"The document claims that there will be no NATO military base in Ulyanovsk and the cargo transit will be absolutely safe and remain under the control of Russian customs officials," he said.
"Not only Communists but everyone in Russia should not forget that NATO is an aggressive alliance that has a long bloody history. And that this alliance has always interfered in the internal affairs of the countries where its facilities are deployed and in this case we are speaking of Central Russia, the territory of which is located in the immediate vicinity of the national capital," Rashkin added.
He said that Communist deputies and all party activists will continue speaking against the establishment of the NATO base in Ulyanovsk.