Opening the meeting, Mr Zhukov spoke about the inspection of the safety of cultural values in national museum funds. He said that the results of inspections are only intermediate. "The Ministry of Culture's timeframe for inspecting the availability as well as the status of accounting and storage conditions has been violated by both federal and regional museums," he said. The work in the regions is proceeding very slowly. "Comprehensive inspections have been completed in only two regions - the Kamchatka Region and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area," he summed up.

He explained the failure to carry out inspections in time and fully comply with the commission's earlier decision by the changes in the structure of the federal executive bodies. However, they did not prevent the working group from the Ministry of the Interior from checking the systems of security and protection of museum collections in a timely manner.

"A considerable portion of recent museum losses was due to the long absence of departmental legal norms, loose control of museum directors over the work of specialists responsible for accounting, storing, and protecting cultural values, and, of course, a general decline in the prestige of museum workers," said Mr Zhukov.

He offered the commission members the opportunity to sum up the results of the work done, and discuss measures that the Government and federal and regional executive authorities could take "to prevent our cultural heritage from sustaining irretrievable losses".

Mr Zhukov also recalled that a decision to draft a government programme for ensuring the safety of the Russian Museum Fund was made a year ago, yet federal agencies have dragged this out. In this context, he suggested discussing a concept of the government programme submitted by the Union of Russian Museums.

Mr Zhukov also emphasized that the Ministry of Culture should regularly and extensively inform the public about the results of the commission's activities and its measures to preserve cultural values.