MOSCOW, December 6 - RAPSI. The European Union's tying up of the transition to a visa-free regime with human rights issues in Russia might result in the procrastination of talks for an indefinite time period, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Anwar Azimov said.

Azimov's answers on the introduction of the Russia-EU visa regime has been published on the Foreign Ministry's website.

"The EU's attempts to artificially tie up the promotion of the visa-free regime to the consideration of human rights issue, make Russia accountable including for fulfilling recommendations of the European Council's and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) human rights institutions, international human rights NGOs, UN treaty bodies and special reporters of the UN Human Rights Council are not acceptable for Russia," he said.

Azimov stressed that such "tying up" policy might result in the procrastination of talks on the visa-free regime for an indefinite time period.

Russia is in talks with the EU to amend legislation and to liberalize visa procedures, which would allow some citizens to travel without visas. Moscow and Brussels finished discussing the step-by-step transition in late November. The list of joint measures for developing an agreement on a visa-free regime was agreed upon at the Russia-EU summit in Brussels on December 14-15 last year.