Downing Street Says

» Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Russia

Asked about the report that the Russian Government had ordered the British Council to close down its two offices outside Moscow, the PMS said that the British Council’s activities in Russia were fully compliant with both Russian and international law. Under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) and the 1994 UK/Russia Cultural Agreement, the Council was fully entitled to operate in Russia, both in Moscow and elsewhere. The British Council engaged in a broad and hugely popular range of activities across Russia, which directly benefited hundreds of thousands of Russians and we, the Council and their Russian partner organisations had every intention that these programmes would continue. We were looking to the Russian Government to honour their obligations under the 1994 Agreement.

Asked if the Government was bothered by the fact that Russia had pulled out of the European Arms treaty, the PMS said that we would have to look at exactly what they had said and consider our response.

Asked if the Government was confident that Britain’s power supplies were secure, the PMS replied that these were primarily commercial matters; there were longstanding agreements in place in relation to our power supplies and that he was not aware that we had any reason to believe that this was an issue at the moment.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.