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NGO-foreign agents law needs adjustment, says Putin Xinhua (Beijing), from Moscow, 5 December 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday expressed his staunch support to a controversial law regulating non-governmental organizations (NGOs), while promising some adjustment to meet current conditions. "Let me say a word about the much-debated law on foreign agents. It was never the aim at the outset to offend or humiliate anyone," Putin told a meeting with members of Russia's Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in the Kremlin Palace. The primary objective of the law was to prevent people abroad from "using financial resources to meddle in our political life, in our internal political affairs," the Kremlin press service quoted him as saying. Putin reiterated that Russian people must decide their own future, organize their own lives and solve own problems. "If we do not have sovereignty, we will dissolve, whether quietly or with tragedies on the way. But either way we cannot let this happen." The president denied that Russia has been under pressure from all sides, saying "no one is pressuring us, they are trying to ... their arms are not long enough." Meanwhile, he admitted that "the law certainly needs adjustment. It is not perfect and perhaps some of its clauses fail to correspond to the present-day conditions." "We certainly need to adjust it because some situations end up in contradiction with our original aims and purpose," Putin said. Russia in 2012 enacted the controversial law, which requires NGOs operating in the country that are financed abroad to register as "foreign agents." Critics accused Moscow of discrediting the NGOs and hindering their work, while Kremlin said some NGOs were involved in destructive political activities. On Thursday, Putin said in his state of the nation address that Russia will not bow to outside pressure because "the more we retreat, the more our opponents will behave cynically and aggressively." From: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/europe/europe/2014-12/06/c_133835951.htm -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
