#13 - JRL 2006-205 - JRL Home
MP highlights shared Russia, U.S. interests on 9/11 anniversary

MOSCOW, September 11 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and the United States should remember that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks showed they have common fundamental interests, a senior member of the upper house of Russia's parliament said Monday.

Russia was one of the first nations to express solidarity with the U.S. after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington. But their relations have since then deteriorated for a variety of reasons, including Moscow's concerns over U.S. foreign policy in the former Soviet Union and anxiety in Washington over the Kremlin's alleged "backsliding" on democracy.

But Mikhail Margelov, the chairman of the Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, said, "Today the situation remains too serious to waste any time complaining about 'perfidy and double standards'."

Speaking on the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives, Margelov said the main lesson was that global politics cannot be dominated by any one nation as "the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent."

The lawmaker said, however, that counter-terrorism efforts by the U.S. and other world powers had so far been unable to reach their objective.

"It would be fair to say that neither the wars under the slogan of spreading democracy, on which the U.S. alone has spent more than $400 billion, nor the tougher regulations encroaching on human rights in historical democracies, have left terrorists defeated," he said. "The global community remains disintegrated; its members settle accounts between themselves and, without defining the phenomenon they are fighting against, they continue to divide terrorists into 'ours' and 'theirs'."