"It is still a pending issue between our states. It is better for Russia to find a solution for this problem, if the Russians didn't want to have EU-Russia negotiations," OSCE PA President Ilkka Kanerva said on Saturday.
Russian Ambassador to Finland Alexander Rumyantsev told RIA Novosti earlier this month only over 1,000 asylum seekers crossed into Finland from Russia over the past few months. By comparison, he said over 30,000 refugees came to Finland through Sweden during the same period.
Kanerva stressed that "it would be in the interest of the Russian authorities to find a solution for this tension on the Finnish-Russian level," adding that the issue was "very important in Finland."
In January, Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini called for urgent measures to protect the Finnish border from the arrival of asylum seekers through Russia.
