MOSCOW, January 21 (RAPSI) - The issue with child adoptions and official Russian access to children already adopted by American parents persists, and Moscow will continue to discuss it with its partners in the US, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a news conference.

Lavrov added that a number of other countries had already terminated their adoption agreements with the US.

“Federal officials can’t do much about this. The issue remains unresolved and must be discussed further in order to gain access to the children and understand the circumstances of each particular child,” the minister noted.

He explained that US state laws often prevail over federal laws in this area, which makes it more difficult.

The Russian federal government banned adoptions by Americans in late 2012 by passing the so-called Dima Yakovlev law, named after a Russian toddler who died of heatstroke after his American adoptive father left him in a parked car for nine hours in 2008.

Of the roughly 60,000 Russian children adopted by US parents since the collapse of the Soviet Union, at least 20 have died in the care of their adoptive parents. Russian officials suggest many more adopted children have been neglected or abused, but say finding records and documentation to support those claims has been difficult.

Critics of the ban, however, say it will deny tens of thousands of children the chance of a normal family life.