Moscow - Russia announced putative measures against
Britain's cultural offices on Monday as they came back to work from
holiday break, defying Russian orders to shut down.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called Britain's move a 'deliberate
provocation,' in spiralling bilateral relations since the 2006
poisoning in London of former Russian spy turned dissident Alexander
Litvinenko.
Britain has ignored Russian directives, which its ambassador said
were counter to international law.
Russia cited a 1963 Vienna Convention on consular activities to
order the closure in December of the British government's 15 regional
offices including those in St Petersburg and Yekaterinenburg, where
staff showed up as usual Monday.
'Considering that our calls have not been heeded, the Russian side
is forced exert pressure through a series of administrative and legal
measures,' the Foreign Ministry said on its website.
Russia declared it would refuse visa to new council employs and
demand back taxes from the organization.
It further threatened 'additional measures concerning the British
Council office in Moscow,' embroiling the cultural organization's
main office that had hitherto been exempt from the dispute.
Anglo-Russian relations sunk to new Cold War lows after
Moscow refused to extradite an ex-KGB bodyguard suspected of
murdering Litvinenko, culminating in the tit-for-tat expulsions of
diplomats last year.
When the new row erupted, Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov said
Russia had suspend drafting the new cooperation agreement that
constitutes the muddy legal basis for the organisation's operations,
'as retaliation for the expelling of Russian diplomats from London.'
British Ambassador Anthony Breton, who has been vilified by
pro-Putin groups in recent months, was summoned to the Foreign
Ministry on Monday for a confrontation with its deputy Vladimir
Titov.
'The British Council is working entirely legally, and will
therefore continue to work. Any Russian action against it would be a
breach of international law,' Brenton told reporters after his
meeting with Titov.
The conflict over the council's legal status has churned since
1994. The organization sees itself as the cultural arm of the British
Embassy and is not registered as an non-governmental organization
under new Russian laws.
'We expect our British partners to stop ignoring obvious facts and
refrain from a line of further confrontation that is fraught with the
most negative consequences for Russian-British relations,' the
Foreign Ministry emphasized Monday.
In response to accusations by British government officials Monday,
head of Russia's Committee on International Affairs Konstatin
Kosachyov said, 'I know precisely that claims on the British Council
are juridical and financial.'
'They are not related in any way to the latest complications in
the Russian-British relations, even though these complexities have
brought this situation to a climax,' he was quoted by Interfax news
agency as saying.
© 2008 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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