NEW-YORK/MOSCOW, July 18 - RAPSI. Alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout's attorney has labeled as bogus a Conflict Awareness Project report stating that his client's former business partners tried to create an arms supply network.

Bout was earlier sentenced in the United States to 25 years in prison.

"It seems that the report's authors are again mulling the idea of a 'Russian connection,' which some organizations badly need to prove their own necessity," the attorney Viktor Burobin said. Yesterday, Conflict Awareness Project Director Kathi Lynn Austin spoke at the UN Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty and presented the results of a six-week investigation into an illegal arms supply network in Mauritius involving two Russian citizens.

The Foreign Ministry has yet to comment on the report.

Bout was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the New York Federal Court for planning to sell arms to the leftist Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces.

The U.S. agents who dealt with Bout presented themselves as the armed forces' commanders. Bout has denied the charges against him.

Austin was previously contracted as a UN arms trafficking expert.