President Vladimir Putin says he considers a dispute with the United States over an archive of Jewish manuscripts to be a dead issue.
A U.S. judge in January ordered that Russia pay $50,000 a day until it turned over the so-called Schneerson Collection of books and documents to Chabad Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.
But Russia claims the collection is state property. On Thursday, Putin visited the state library branch at the Jewish Museum where some of the books are held and said: "From this moment, I consider the question of the Schneerson library to be closed."
(AP)
