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LJUBLJANA, July 31 (Itar-Tass) — Slovenia is Russia’s ally as concerns visa regime cancellation with the EU, President of the National Assembly (lower house of parliament) of the Republic of Slovenia Pavel Gantar stated summing up the results of negotiations with his Russian counterpart, speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov.
“Unfortunately visa regime cancellation is not so near”, – he admitted. “There are very strict criteria for taking this decision”, he added.
At the same time Gantar stressed that Slovenia has always supported relaxation of visa requirements between Russia and Europe. “We have always been in favour of the elimination of visas and are Russia’s ally in this matter,” he underlined.
At the same time he said that “nobody is to blame that the visa regime has not yet been cancelled, we should work together to settle this issue.”