Russia is backsliding on democracy and the EU must take Moscow to task while bringing other former Soviet republics closer to the West, the bloc's incoming External Relations Commissioner said on Tuesday.
"It's quite obvious, let me be quite clear on that, that we are seeing a backsliding in democracy in Russia at the moment," Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the outgoing Austrian foreign minister, told a confirmation hearing in the European Parliament.
"We need to speak frankly, and you know what that means in diplomatic jargon, with each other about this, but also as equal partners," she said. Ferrero-Waldner insisted she would press Russia on human rights, saying that even in the aftermath of the school siege in the southern town of Beslan in which more than 300 people died, there was no excuse for reverses in basic rights.
"Human rights have always to be defended, also when it comes to combating terrorism, and it's up to us to say this and to shout this from the rooftops," she said.
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