MOSCOW. Jan 21 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has criticized the European Union for condoning Baltic countries' reluctance to deal with the problem of persons without citizenship on the basis of international organization's recommendations.
"We are not particularly happy about the European Union's attempts to justify their position and, in fact, disregard for recommendations, provided by international organizations, to which Estonia, Latvia and other members of the European Union belong," Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday.
"The European Union is kind of covering this approach by claiming that the situation with human rights in the European Union is sort of satisfactory, and no one should interfere," he said. Lavrov described this position as unacceptable, because, he said, one can not apply one set of humanitarian rights to the European Union and another set of humanitarian rights to other "second-rate" European countries.
"All of us are members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has adopted a set of universal political obligations that all have signed. The Council of Europe has conventions which must be fulfilled, as all members of the European Union are signatories to these conventions," Lavrov said.