MOSCOW, September 11 (RIA Novosti) – France is interested in stabilizing the situation in Ukraine and the Middle East and stands ready to work together with Russia to this end, Thierry Mariani, a member of the French National Assembly and a member of the French delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, said Thursday.
"In the context of the dramatic events unfolding in the world today – in Ukraine, in the Middle East – we are interested in joint efforts. We are interested in a stable and peaceful situation in both Ukraine and the Middle East," Mariani, vice-President of the France-Russia friendship group, told Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, at a meeting in Moscow.
France remembers the victims Russia has sustained in the fight against terrorism, Mariani added.
"I know that these days you are commemorating the 10th anniversary of the tragic event in Beslan that claimed the lives of many people," the member of the French National Assembly said.
On September 1, 2004, a group of armed Islamic terrorists took more than 1,100 school children, their teachers and relatives hostage in a school in the town of Beslan, in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia. A total of 334 people, including 318 hostages, 186 of them children, 10 special forces officers and 15 policemen, were killed.
