MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. The chief of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, has suggested amending Article 15 of the Russian Constitution to remove from it the supremacy of international law over national legislation. He voiced the proposal in an interview to the government-published Rossiiskaya Gazeta, published on the daily’s website.

"Back in 1993, when the current Constitution was to be adopted, supremacy of international law was presented to us by advisers from the United States as the fundamental value of a state ruled by law. It may look ridiculous, but in a report on the draft Constitution that was published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta in 1993 it was stated with pride that its provisions had undergone foreign scrutiny," Bastrykin recalled.

About the ratio of international and national law he said that "the criteria must be determined exclusively by the country’s status in the international scene, and also by its strategic and geopolitical interests."

"Law is unable to exist all by itself, for its own sake. It is an instrument, a tool having certain ideological content - a legal idea, which, however, always has applied uses," Bastrykin said. "The geopolitical, strategic and economic interests and even certain basics of outlooks may vary from country to country."