MOSCOW, June 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russia can fight race hate and extremism by developing cultural and educational programs to help immigrants integrate in their new environment, the first deputy prime minister said Thursday.
Concerns over immigration have been raised in the wake of a spate of race-hate killings across the country and the publication of a report by Amnesty International that slammed the government for not doing enough to combat the problem.
"We must create all the necessary conditions to help immigrants fully adapt to life [in Russian society]," Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Moscow.
Medvedev, who has been frequently touted as a potential presidential successor to Vladimir Putin in 2008, said that high migration flows in many countries created a breeding ground for a rise in extremism, race hate and xenophobia.
Many migrants from former Soviet republics in Central Asia come in search of work to the Russian capital and major cities such as St. Petersburg, where there have been many horrific race-hate attacks in the past two years, but often encounter violence from extremist groups.
Amnesty said assailants were often members of "well-organized groups professing a racist, neo-fascist and violent ideology" but said the government was doing little to tackle the problem.
Medvedev said that education could help eliminate the differences in human behavior that led to conflicts.
"We [Russia] see education as not only a fundamental tool of economic and technological progress, but also as a means to attain social and civil peace, a way to overcome cultural differences that hamper sustained development in the world," Medvedev said.
"Today, when we are all interested in integration in global scientific and educational processes, the compatibility of educational standards becomes extremely important," he said.
The first deputy prime minister also said that it was necessary to lift existing administrative and organizational barriers to ensure a free international exchange of researchers, teachers and students.
"Two things are, probably, the most important for us: we would like the Russian education to be open and integrated in the global educational environment," he said, adding that education would be one of three key issues on the agenda of the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July, along with energy security and the fight against infectious diseases.
"We are ready to closely cooperate [with the international community] in all three spheres," Medvedev said.
