Thank you, chairman. We are pleased to meet our counterparts in Ireland. Our committee does not have "women's rights" in its name, perhaps unfortunately, and this should be rectified one way or another. As I mentioned earlier, we had a very detailed and mutually beneficial discussion on several issues with the members of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs. As Ireland and Russia are members of the international community, we have come upon several very important problems that we need to solve.
The chairman has described what this committee deals with and we would like to elaborate a bit on what our committee is responsible for. The constitution of the Russian Federation specifies in a very detailed way the exact responsibilities of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, and of nine of the main responsibilities, five belong to our committee. Our committee is responsible for giving the President of the Russian Federation permission to send our military abroad for one purpose or other, for various questions related to war and peace and for emergencies that arise in Russia. It is responsible for all issues concerning the army and defence forces, including financing and the legislative side of the work of our defence forces.
If we were to be a bit immodest, we would say that our committee would be within the top three busiest committees in the Federation Council, if one was to take into account the volume of legislative work we have to get through. As the committee may know, Russia is still going through a period of reforms which touch upon all areas of life, including the legislative process. One of the most acute problems, not only for our country but for Ireland as well, is the legislative basis for the fight against terrorism. The committee will surely be aware that our country experienced big problems during the terrorist act in the theatre in Moscow, and under these circumstances, militia and our defence forces found it hard to find the right way to deal with the situation because of the blank spaces in our legislative base.
This lack of legislative foundation in the fight against terrorism has led to problems in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. There was too much of it during those days in Moscow, when the television stations and newspapers could show exactly what preparatory work the Russian forces were going through in order to fight the terrorists. The terrorists were therefore aware of the actions of the Russian militia, which was completely wrong. The main problem on the legislative side is the fine line between the importance of countering terrorism and that of protecting human rights. We are aiming to find the line where one thing ends and another begins.
Under these circumstances there are bound to be victims of counter measures in the fight against terrorism. It is also very difficult to define how many victims we should allow in this situation. This is all I would like to share with the committee at the moment.