MOSCOW. July 4 (Interfax) - Russia's State Duma has passed in first reading and immediately in general a bill saying that the parliament members could lose their mandates for travelling abroad without the approval from the chambers' leadership.
"The requirement for the State Duma and the Federation Council members to receive an approval for leaving the country is justified and dictated by security issues related to both the state and those travelling abroad," Chairman of the State Duma Security Committee Vasily Piskaryov said on Thursday while presenting the bill.
He mentioned that Ukrainian courts had sentenced to in absentia some Russian parliament members, including those attending the reading, to lengthy prison terms on count of encroachments on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.
"If such sentence of a Ukrainian court with an arrest warrant is included in the Interpol database, the authorities of the host country are obligated to detain the wanted person and hand him over to the requesting site, in this case, Ukraine," Piskaryov said.
"I will leave this without comment. Only four UN member states - North Korea, Micronesia, Palau and Tuvalu - are currently not the members od Interpol," he said.
Arrest warrants can appear in the Interpol database on the day of arrival at the foreign state's airport, and "then the same scheme will be used, namely, detention, arrest and extradition," Piskaryov said.
Numerous attempts have been made to detain the parliament members and their relatives, he said.
Another reason for the adoption of the bill is to ensure the security of the state as all State Duma members and senators have access to state secrets due to their posts, Piskaryov said.
"Our security agencies have recently registered more than 1,000 investigative actions by foreign special services, including provocations against Russian citizens and attempts to recruit them with elements of blackmail, in the period of their stay abroad," he said.
The Russian parliament members are currently only required to notify about their visits abroad. The bill introduces an authorization requirement, the procedure will be established by the Councils of the chambers of the parliament, Oleg Morozov, the head of the State Duma Control Committee, told reporters on Thursday. Deputies' mandates' can be cancelled early in the event of unauthorized travel abroad, he said.