Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague for his outstanding contributions to the trip. He was a valuable partner, he was an aggressive representative of the American position, and yet he was open and aware of the need to listen to the Russian-Ukrainian-Moldovan perspective of world issues and the relationship to our relationship with those countries. First of all, since we formed the Duma-Congress initiative 7 years ago, I have had two overriding purposes in our relationship with Russia. We tend to want to rely on the Presidents of our two countries to work out our relationship. As we all know, they are the heads of state and they are the ones who set the overall policy. But there is a constructive role for the parliaments to play. There is a very important role that we can do to assist emerging democracies like those we visited. The two overriding purposes I have had in forming the interparliamentary dialogue with the Russians was to empower the parliament to show the emerging Duma and its leaders how they can accomplish the same kinds of checks and balances that we provide in our government here in America.”