Duma Statement on Bill on Military Graves Disproportionate – Tallinn

TALLINN. Jan 17 (Interfax) – Estonia should not respond to the Russian State Duma’s statement denouncing the Estonian bill permitting the dismantling of the Soldier Liberator Monument, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said.

“We are not in the habit of responding to groundless accusations,” he said.

“The accusations are disproportionate from the point of view of facts,” he said.

The statement was probably made for domestic political reasons. “Unfortunately, it has happened before that has Russia accused others and pointed a finger at them to distract attention from the problems of its own public,” he said.

On Wednesday the Duma denounced the Estonian bill that permits the moving of the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during World War II from a common grave in center of Tallinn and the dismantling of a monument in their honor.

The Duma statement says the bill, “which is aimed at destroying the memory of the victims of the fight against fascism, is evidence of the Estonian government’s

intention to continue its course of representing Nazism in a heroic light and justifying its ideology despite the will of the states that formed the anti-Nazi coalition.”

The Duma plans to call on the Russian president and prime minister “to link issues of further Russian-Estonian cooperation to the way the Estonian government enforces the law and to the Russian federal law ‘On Special Economic Measures’ of December 30, 2006,” the statement says.

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