BRUSSELS, August 30 (RIA Novosti, Alexander Shishlo) - A senior member of the lower house of the Russian parliament has urged Russia and the European Union to sign a new agreement on partnership and cooperation to replace the current one that expires in 2007.
"I am calling for a new document to be drafted and signed, because the current agreement has become outdated," Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the State Duma's international affairs committee, told journalists Monday during a visit to Brussels.
The MP said the current agreement had been drafted while the EU still did not recognize Russia's market-economy status, which is why a number of the document's provisions had become outdated.
"A series of agreements have simply become ineffective, because they correspond more to romantic ideas about our cooperation rather than the real interests in this interaction" the committee chairman said.
According to Kosachev, it would be regrettable if the current document were to be extended automatically. "The agreement lives its own life," he said. "But cooperation between Russia and the EU is being pursued according to different scenarios."
"That is why the document has to be re-written, and, as far as I understand, Russia wants it more than our partners from the EU, at least European Commission bureaucrats," Kosachev said.
The Russian parliamentarian said Russia-EU relations should focus on bilateral contacts and said he was in favor of establishing a new body for bilateral interaction.
"I would welcome the establishment of a permanent body named the Russia-EU Council so that decisions are made more by politicians rather than bureaucrats, including decisions on preparing and signing new agreements," Kosachev said.
"I think it will be much harder to speak about this with Euro-bureaucrats, and we might simply lose time as a result," Kosachev said.
