Ogoron Asatur, an official at the Foreign Ministry's consular service, said that in a recent order Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin extended to the end of 1995 the service's right to issue passports, a power granted to the Interior Ministry since June 1.
Asatur said the order also allowed thousands of Russians with invalid travel documents to re-register their passports rather than wait in longer lines for new ones.
Government spokespeople said they had not heard of the Chernomyrdin decree, but said that did not mean it had not been signed.
A law that took effect in March 1993 aimed to guarantee unrestricted travel but ironically complicated travel for many people by invalidating old passports and requiring each traveler to apply for a new one.
The law transferred passport control from the Foreign Ministry to the Interior Ministry, but the former's powers were later extended to June 1, 1994 to help speed passport issuance. The new order extends this to December 1995.
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