President Putin meets head of human rights commission

Vladimir Putin held a routine meeting with Ella Pamfilova, the chairperson of the Russian President's human rights commission, presidential press secretary Aleksei Gromov said.

According to him, Putin and Pamfilova discussed work being done by the human rights commission.

The human rights commission "reflects a wide range of public opinions on the most vital problems in the sphere of human rights," Ella Pamfilova told journalists following the meeting.

Vladimir Putin expressed concern about the fact that exercising of human rights "sometimes becomes a privilege, inaccessible to the indigent and unprotected strata of the population", Pamfilova said.

According to her, one of the most important duty of the commissions is that public opinion and public initiative on key issues related to protection of human rights should be claimed by the supreme power, the Russian President.

She therefore hopes that the commission will become "one of the linking elements of effective interaction between the president and society". Vladimir Putin supported this idea, she said.