MOSCOW. Oct 12 (Interfax) - Growing stratification in Russia does not promote democracy, Chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin has said.

"When the discourse begins that we do not have the same standard of democracy as say in Antwerp or in the United States, one wishes to have the same standard. But unfortunately, nothing comes of it," he said at an international forum on the protection of constitutional and social rights in Moscow on Friday.

To prove his point he quoted statistics according to which the gap between the richest and poorest citizens of Russia is ten-fold and according to some sources forty-fold.

"One third of the population is poor," Zorkin said.

In addition, almost 14% of the population is at the bottom of society, Zorkin said. "According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, there are 4 million vagrants, 3 million beggars, 5 million street kids and 4.5 million prostitutes in Russia. If we add 5 million drug addicts and AIDS patients, we get 20-22 million people or about 13-14% of the population," he said.

In rural areas half of the population lives totally on the basis of a subsistence economy, Zorkin said.

"The present conditions encourage the solution of these problems through strong concentrated government. The result is a vicious circle of social inequality that can increase. The question arises - how to make government such that it would not spill beyond the framework of law," Zorkin said.

"These conditions call for the growing role of the international community and the legal environment of Europe based on the principles of democratic law-governed social state to which we belong," he said.