The Foreign Ministry on Monday defended the appointment of a Russian diplomat as the United Nations' top drug fighter and dismissed critics as participants of an anti-Russian conspiracy.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named Yury Fedotov, 63, former Russian ambassador to Britain, as head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime on July 9.
Twenty-three European nongovernmental organizations spoke against Fedotov's nomination in a letter to Ban in June. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Moscow Times, cites Russia's abysmal record on fighting drug-related cases of HIV as a reason against his appointment.
But Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko waved the complaints aside.
"It's no secret to anyone that there are powerful and active forces interested in presenting the situation with HIV and AIDS in Russia as nearing a catastrophe," he said, without identifying the forces.
"We believe this approach is absolutely unfounded," Nesterenko said in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry's web site.
He acknowledged at a news conference that authorities have failed to slow soaring HIV rates but said there was "every reason to believe that we will achieve that sooner or later," Interfax reported.
An UN report released Monday said an underground HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia — including Russia — is building at an alarming pace, Reuters reported.
The number of HIV-infected people in the region has increased by 66 percent since 2001, totaling about 1.5 million, the report said. It did not provide a separate figure for Russia but said harsh political and social attitudes, particularly to drug users who are at a very high risk of HIV, hamper the efforts to stop the epidemic.
Critics might accept Fedotov's appointment, but the Russian must show that he will "take the lead in the development of human rights-based drug policies," Damon Barrett, a senior analyst for the International Harm Reduction Association, said by e-mail.
Fedotov, a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, joined the diplomatic service in 1971, the UN said in a statement. He has also worked at the Russian mission at the UN headquarters in New York and served as a deputy foreign minister.
Repeated calls to the Russian Embassy in London and an e-mailed request both went unanswered Monday.