The speaker of the upper house of the Russian...

Sergei Mironov said the moratorium should be in force until Russia signs an intergovernmental agreement on child adoption rules with foreign countries, in particular with the United States.

"A special agreement should be signed guaranteeing that a state maintains proper control of adopted children," Mironov told journalists.

The issue has become controversial in Russia in recent years, following numerous incidents in the Unites States involving adopted children from Russia.

In the latest case, a U.S. adoptive mother last week sent Artyom, 7, on a one-way flight back to Russia just six months after adoption claiming he was "psychopathic."

Russia was the third largest source of adoptions to the United States in 2009 with 1,586 adoptions, after China (3,001 adoptions) and Ethiopia (2,227), the U.S. State Department said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last Friday that Russia could freeze child adoptions by U.S. citizens until the countries

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