Chris Smith: “This is a very worthy and I think very important contribution to U.S. bilateral relations with Russia. Russia is a…”

“This is a very worthy and I think very important contribution to U.S. bilateral relations with Russia. Russia is a country that is of vital strategic, economic, and military importance to our Nation. I think the pending legislation outlines within the text a number of very constructive initiatives. Madam Speaker, I recently led the U.S. delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Bucharest, Romania; and we spent the better part of a week exploring the destructive consequence of corruption. Our conclusions were clear: Corruption represents one of the greatest threats to democracy and market oriented economies on the face of the earth. Corruption, to a very large degree, has replaced ideology communism as the greatest potential threat to undermining the emergence of democracy in central and Eastern Europe, and especially in Russia itself. We now know that organized crime and criminal elements, some of whom used to be the old KGB, are growing and expanding in Russia. The emerging democracy is being hijacked by thugs and brigands.”