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Senior Kremlin official sees Russia's future among 'Western democracies'

Kremlin and St. Basil's The first deputy head of the Russian president's administration, Vladislav Surkov, has set out his vision of Russia as "one of the Western democracies" at a meeting with "the presidents of student societies from leading US universities", Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said in a series of reports on 18 November.

The reports, which carried a Moscow dateline, did not say when or where the meeting took place.

"We hope that Russia will become one of the Western democracies and we are on that road," Surkov said.

Discussing the path Russia had covered since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Surkov said that "the main achievement of recent years is that we have taken a sober look at ourselves".

Surkov suggested that the essence of the Russian leadership's calls for a "new world order" was the spread of "democratic procedures" internationally. "President Dmitriy Medvedev has repeatedly said that our main objective is eventually to arrive at a certain new world order. It seems to us that, since democracy has become an almost universally recognized form of state-building ... (ellipsis as received) then we probably need democracy in the global sense of the word, so that all external problems are tackled through democratic procedures in the world as well."

RIA also carried Surkov's brief remarks about the current state of US-Russian relations, in which he said that "Presidents Medvedev and Obama have struck a very precise pitch in their dialogue".

Most of Surkov's remarks at the meeting that were reported by RIA concerned the future of Russian politics.

"Our view is that we lack an influential liberal party. That is what I, for example, think. But everything probably comes in its own time," he said.

He asserted that Russia's political system reflected the moods of various sections of society, adding that not a single Russian party questioned "the need for a democratic course".

Medvedev has set the task of "improving the quality of popular representation and creating additional conditions for free, fair and civilized competition between parties", he said.

RIA reported him as saying that Russia would have "a three-four-five-party parliament in the foreseeable future".

"I think that in the foreseeable future, within the next decade, a flexible, diverse and sufficiently sophisticated political system will emerge in Russia," he added.

He also predicted that the influence of the "official opposition" (Russian: "sistemnaya oppozitsiya") would increase.

Turning to the next State Duma election, which is due at the end of 2011, he predicted that it would once again be won by the ruling One Russia party, albeit less convincingly than last time.

"I am sure that One Russia will find it much harder to secure a constitutional majority - two-thirds of the votes (presumably he meant two-thirds of State Duma seats). In order to have some important issues approved, it will have to join coalitions with other parties," he said.

Surkov also said that the country needed a One Russia victory in order to achieve its "modernization objectives".


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