TALKS ABOUT SLOWING DOWN LIBERAL REFORMS AFTER BESLAN TRAGEDY GROUNDLESS, SAYS MARGELOV

NEW YORK, September 22 (RIA Novosti's Andrei Loshchilin) - Talks about a possibility to slow down liberal reforms and toughen state control over private business in the wake of the Beslan tragedy in Russia are groundless, said Mikhail Margelov, the chairman of the Federation Council international affairs committee, who spoke on Tuesday in New York at the Eurasia fund.

The reforms will be focused on building a market infrastructure and strengthening relevant institutions, said the senator.

"After Beslan, anti-corruption actions are expected. The regional power reform is in particular aimed at this. Direct elections of regional heads turned into an arena of a war of clans and groups with different interests. In the long run, the results of these elections often turned out far from the electorate's will. Taking into account the responsibility of regional heads for the state of affairs in provinces, the Kremlin decided to give up direct elections. The sense of this refusal on a wide scale is in countering the negative tendencies that appeared after the collapse of the Soviet system," said the senator.

He called the reaction to the reform by a number of western political circles and press superficial and inadequate. "Such criticism starts every time the power in Russia intends to establish order," said Mr. Margelov. "Critics do not want to note that the Russian leadership intends to reform the political system from two sides: strengthening the executive authority will be accompanied by democratization of elections to the representative power. Stake is made on the development of the party system. For the West, this is a long-gained position, for Russia, an evident progress."

"The West does not understand or pretends it doesn't understand the difference in aims terrorism attacks, say, the U.S., Spain or Russia with. International terrorism, which attacked [the U.S.] on September 11, 2001, does not threaten the U.S. integrity. International terrorism which has built nests in Chechnya and the neighboring states threatens Russia's integrity. That's why the Russian leadership does not intend to conduct any negotiations with terrorists," said Mr. Margelov.

In his words, the West should understand that Russia can withdraw its federal troops from its territory, in this case from Chechnya, not earlier than Germany can withdraw Bundeswehr units from North Rhine-Westphalia or the U.S. its units from Ohio.