Russia expects EU, OSCE to denounce SS gathering in Estonia

A gathering in honour of local SS men in Estonia is a negative event in the life of Europe, Andrei Kokoshin, chairman of the State Duma committee on the CIS and compatriots, said in a RIA interview Wednesday.

"One more gathering held in honour of SS men and 'forest brothers' in Estonia the other day, which was attended by Tallinn vice-mayor and ex-president of Estonia Lennart Meri, as well as by other political figures is a highly negative event in the life of that Baltic country and Europe as a whole," said Kokoshin.

He recalled that SS troops in Estonia were made up of the former guards of German "death camps" and were denounced as an inalienable part of that criminal organisation at the Nuremberg Trials.

"We have the right to expect the European public, the official EU structures and the PACE to give a negative reaction to the Nazism-rehabilitation actions held in Latvia and Estonia," said the committee chairman.

"These are not local or harmless events; every normal person is outraged not only because they are a sacrilege of the memory of tens of millions of victims of nazism from many countries of Europe, including Germany," Kokoshin said.

"Nazism is a form of political extremism that used the most ruthless methods of attaining its political and ideological goals. It is similar to those extremist organisations, which have chosen terrorism as their main instrument today," said the committee chairman.

In his words, "the rehabilitation of old extremism gives new weapons to modern extremism, which is doubly unacceptable in conditions of the growing struggle against terrorism."