RUSSIA MAY LEAVE INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE CONVENTION.

RF Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Shakhrai said that Moscow should considering suspending its membership in the International Convention on Refugees so that it could take reprisal measures against neighboring states which allow refugees to flow into Russia, Rossiiskaya gazeta reported April 27. Shakhrai added that the RF Government would announce a new immigration program in August. His comments came as the wave of refugees into the Russian Federation continues to grow: more than 1.1 million refugees arrived in 1994, 300,000 of them illegally. The costs of such immigration are high: according to Shakhrai, it now costs six times as much to support a refugee from beyond the CIS as to support one from within it.

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