The Russian Foreign Ministry criticized on Wednesday the US report on human rights, saying it does not contain anything radically new and is based on unverified information.

The ministry pointed out in a commentary posted on its website that the US report in which Russia ranks among the countries with the worst human rights records "does not have any substantive elements."

"As before, empty statements are being made about the federal forces' reprisals against civilians in Chechnya, about what they called insufficient competitiveness in presidential and parliamentary elections, problems with the freedom of the press and infringements on the rights of ethnic and religious minorities," the commentary said.

However, the US report disregarded the curbing of ethnic Russians' rights in Latvia and Estonia and referred to the fugitive Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov and his party as theRussian republic's leadership, the ministry rebuked.

The ministry said that Russia takes note of the report's "amazingly didactic tone, the use of unverified and untrue information by the authors, and various inventions and speculations."

A senior Russian lawmaker said earlier Wednesday that the US human rights report was "shallow" and "unbalanced" as it only points to the banal complaints of Russia's policy toward Chechnya but turns a blind eye to the progress made in the war-torn republic.

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Russian State Duma's international relations committee, stressed that the United Stateshas no right to criticize Russia following the scandal over abusesby US servicemen in Iraqi prisons.

Source: Xinhua