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A US commission on religious freedom visiting Russia voiced concern on Friday over a draft report that presents Roman Catholicism and other non-native religions as potential threats to national security.

Felice Gaer, head of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, told AFP that her group had questioned Russian officials about a "so-called Zorin report," named after Nationalities Minister Vladimir Zorin, and been reassured that it had no official standing.

Russian media last month published extracts from the report, said to be still in draft form, that purported to be an examination of the development of religious extremism.

A section of the report, entitled "Assessments of Threats to National Security Related to Religious Extremism", contained a list of "foreign confessions" headed by the Roman Catholic Church, followed by Protestantism (no specific faiths were specified) and rounded out by organisations including Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists.

The report spared the Russian Orthodox Church, Judaism and Buddhism but attacked Islam.

Gaer said that her team had questioned several government officials on the report.

"No-one says it has any standing," she said. However "if it were in fact a real report it would be very disquieting."
The reported investigation of supposed ties between religion and extremist activities "is somewhat unexpected and problematic," she said.

Fellow commission member Firuz Kazemzadeh said the report was "a piece of paper, floating around, no-one admits to authoring it.

"The ideas expressed in it are deeply disturbing ... but the government is very emphatic that this is not a government document.

They say they have no knowledge of its provenance," he said.

Lawrence Uzzell, a specialist on religion writing in Friday's edition of the Moscow Times, said a Russian government task force co-headed by Zorin and the pro-Russian Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov was currently refining proposals to ban "religious extremism." Noting that the draft report proposes "intelligence measures" against suspected "religious extremists" who would face six-year prison terms, he said its authors "evidently believe that this category evidently includes every religious entity not servile to the Russian state." Whether or not the report's ideas are enacted, "it is almost certain that Russians will have less religious freedom a year from now than today," Uzzell wrote.

Gaer further voiced concern over the growing number of cases in which Catholics and other religious leaders have been refused visas.

"This is not a new problem but it is one that is increasing," she said.

The US commission also questioned officials and religious leaders over reports that the Kremlin has been seeking increasingly to intervene in disputes within religious communities, often favouring one side against another in ways seemingly intended to secure political advantage.

Jewish leaders told the commission that though "they feel there is no policy of government anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism in the street is flourishing," Gaer said.

Since arriving in Moscow on January 18 the three-strong delegation has held talks with the human rights ombudsman Oleg Mironov and a wide range of government officials, religious leaders and non-governmental organisations.

They were due to leave late Friday for the Belarus capital Minsk for a similar mission - Sapa-AFP.

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