MOSCOW 's The Estonian and Latvian ambassadors to Moscow are urging the Russian parliament to lend a hand to encourage Russian-speaking residents of the Baltic countries to seek citizenship of their countries of residence.
"We think the State Duma could encourage them [non-citizens] to become fully-fledged citizens either by acquiring citizenship or by learning the Estonianlanguage," the Estonian ambassador, Marina Kaljurand, was quoted by Russian news agency Interfax as saying at a Duma hearing on the subject of non-citizenship on June 9.
The statistics quoted by Russian lawmakers at the hearing were largely outdated, Kaljurand observed.
"Many figures and facts presented here today do not correspond to the truth," the diplomat said.
There are in Estonia around 100,000 persons of undefined citizenship who make up 8 percent of the country's population, she said.
Latvia's Ambassador Andris Teikmanis also refuted the statistics about non-citizens living in his country. However, he did not name a specific figure but said only that the percentage of stateless persons in Latvia was slightly bigger than Estonia's.
Teikmanis also said that since Latvia's accession to the European Union in 2004 about 50,000 people had opted for Latvian citizenship.
The Latvian diplomat also called on the State Duma to speed up the ratification of a bilateral accord on social security. The agreement regulates the payment of pensions, including pensions to persons of undefined citizenship.
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