RUSSIA * FOREIGN * MINISTER * IVANOV * VALENTINA * BORODIN








HANOI, March 1, 2001. /RIA Novosti correspondent/ -- The main thing about Pavel Borodin is now to do everything possible to decide his fate, but "not to find a scape goat" in the arisen situation. This statement was made by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in reply to journalists' request to comment on the words of Pavel Borodin's wife Valentina who spoke on Wednesday evening in the Russian State Television (RTR) programme Podrobnosti. 


	In the interview given by Valentina Borodin she said that her husband "returned his air ticket twenty minutes before his flight to New York, because his diplomatic passport had not been brought to him." He changed his decision after a telephone call from the Russian Foreign Ministry when he was told that he should fly and that his passport would be delivered by diplomatic mail." On the arrival of Pavel Borodin in New York, he was awaited for at the airport "by FBI agents with the data of his passports, both civil and diplomatic," said Valentina Borodin. 


	It is noteworthy to mention that State Secretary of the Union of Russia and Belarus Pavel Borodin was arrested in January,  this year, after his arrival in New York where he intended to  take party in the festivities on the occasion of the inauguration of US President George W. Bush, Jr. At the present time Pavel Borodin is kept in the prison of New York on charges of laundering money, launched against him by the Swiss Prosecutor's Office. -O-   (kos/kri)  01/03/01    17:54