A delegation of members of the Ireland-Russia parliamentary friendship group intends to visit Russia in the beginning
of February, the visit has been preparing for more than a year, member of the State Duma, representative of the LDPR faction Anton Morozov
Anton Yurieviсh
told journalists.
The visit of the parliamentarians from Ireland will be discussed at the meeting of the Council of the State Duma on Wednesday. According to the agenda of the meeting, published in the State Duma database, the visit of the Irish delegation to take place on February 11–13, the delegation is expected to consist of seven people.
Anton Morozov said that the issue of exchange of visits has been discussed for more than a year.
“This is a newly established group, we created it last year and began to make contacts with the help of the Embassy of Ireland in Moscow and the Russian Embassy in Dublin and agreed with the Irish colleagues on the start of inter-parliamentary dialogue and exchange of visits. The first visit of the Irish delegation is planned in February, the reciprocal visit of our friendship group — in June,” Anton Morozov added, who is coordinator of the Interparliamentary Group on interaction with Parliament of Ireland.
The parliamentarian stressed that the current agenda of bilateral relations will be discussed at the meeting. Answering the question of whether the topic of suspicion of espionage of Paul Whelan in Russia would be raised at the talks, Anton Morozov said that this issue is not within the remit of parliamentarians.
“This question is not within our remit, I hope that such things will not hamper our cooperation, since we have points of convergence. I think we will have something to talk about in addition,” the member of the State Duma noted.
Earlier, the FSB reported that US citizen Paul Whelan had been detained in Moscow on espionage charges, and criminal proceedings were initiated. As the representative of the State Department told RIA Novosti, the United States confirms that the Russian Foreign Ministry has officially informed of the detention of an American citizen in Moscow. He refused to provide additional details referring to confidentially considerations. As Whelan’s brother said, the detainee is a former marine and went to Moscow for a wedding.
