MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian government will back an amendment to a long-awaited bill on land sales that would prohibit foreigners from buying agricultural land, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said Monday.
The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, is to vote on a bill this summer that would legalize the sale of farmland for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It gave preliminary approval to the bill in May.
Gordeyev discussed the bill with representatives of the Duma's four pro-government factions. He said afterward that the factions would introduce an amendment banning the sale of farmland to foreigners and that the government would support it.
Gordeyev said he did not think the ban would deter investors, since foreigners would be allowed to lease farmland for 49 years.
"Forty-nine years is a long enough period that will allow us to fully develop our agricultural production," Gordeyev said.
The sale of land to foreigners is the most contentious aspect of the bill. Communists, nationalists and even Nobel Prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn have warned against selling off Russia's natural wealth to Westerners.
Originally, the bill barred foreigners from buying farmland in border areas but elsewhere left it up to local authorities to decide whether to permit sales to foreigners.
The lawmakers also plan to lower the limit on the amount of land one person can own in any one of the country's 89 regions. The government's bill originally set a limit of 35 percent, but the lawmakers plan to change it to 10 percent, Gordeyev said.