Representatives of Russian NGOs told Bush the request of the American colleagues
01.01.70
St. Petersburg, 14th July – RIA News. The representative of the Russian NGOs told George Bush the request of their American colleagues – to meet with them after he returns back home from the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. RIA NEWs were informed about that by Igor Chestin, the head of the WWF-Russia
The USA President met with the representatives of the Russian NGOs on Friday in St. Petersburg.
“On the request of my USA colleague – the manager of the WWF, USA, - asked Bush to find a possibility to meet with the public organizations in the USA after his return from Summit, as he had never had such meetings before”, Chestin said.
According to Chestin, USA NGOs have long list of problems that they would love to discuss with G. Bush.
“They took the opportunity, as it happened to be easier for me to meet with their President”, said Chestin.
He mentioned that the meeting was beneficial for both countries. In particular, NGO representatives were interested to see the reaction of G. Bush to their speeches that touched upon such problems as Russian NGO Law, counterterrorism actions, the necessity to correlate the problems of ecological and energy security during the dialogue of the G8 leaders, to the idea to create a global center on the questions of the “sustainable energy” under G8 and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), consumption of Russian forest resources and to the possibility for the USA to join the agreements that are expected to substitute Kyoto Protocol after its extermination in 2012.
Chestin stated that on the whole Bush approved of the idea to join. “He said that the situation when Russia and the whole Europe works according to Kyoto and we do according some different scheme is not right”, said Chestin and added that Americans are taking active part in the development of future agreements.
As the head of the inter-regional organization “Open Russia”, Irina Yassina, said to RIS News, the meeting also raised the questions of the freedom of Mass Media, situation in Chechnya and the state if democracy in Russia.
“Global questions were also touched upon, for instance, disafforestation. But the main subject concerned the problems of Russian policy”, Yassina said.
Summing up the results of the meeting attended by the representatives of many regional public organizations (from Novgorod, Kalinigrad, Pskov and other Russian cities), Yassina pointed out: “I had an impression that USA President got interested and he received answers for his questions”.