The next round of Russian-U.S. consultations on a bilateral child adoption agreement will be held on June 14-16 in Washington, a U.S. State Department spokesperson on consular issues told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
Two rounds of Russian-U.S. talks on the inter-governmental child adoption agreement were held on April 29 and May 12-14 in Moscow.
"In May we received our "homework" and now we want to see how it was done in order to meet in mid-June and continue discussions on the draft treaty," Alina Levitskaya, who heads Russia's education ministry's social protection department, said earlier.
"According to the Foreign Ministry's information we will receive the draft agreement from our U.S. colleagues tomorrow [on Thursday]," she added.
Russia is one of the largest sources of adoptions for U.S. families, accounting for about 10% of foreign adoptions, but the issue has become controversial in recent years following several incidents involving the mistreatment of Russian children in the United States.
Fifteen Russian children have died at the hands of their adoptive parents in the U.S. since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the issue has provoked repeated calls for a ban on foreign adoptions. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said Russia could freeze child adoptions by U.S. citizens until the countries sign a formal agreement to regulate them.
The issue again came to focus this spring as a 7-year-old boy was put on a plane alone to Moscow by his U.S. adoptive mother, who claimed he was "psychopathic."
MOSCOW, June 2 (RIA Novosti)
