Moscow, March 23 (IANS/RIA Novosti): Moscow wants tougher requirements for foreigners wishing to adopt Russian children.

Advocating the need for strict rules, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded the US authorities should prosecute a couple alleged to have abused their four adoptive children.

"We consider it necessary to tighten the procedure for the selection of those seeking to adopt [Russian children]," the minister said at a meeting in the lower house of the Russian parliament -- the State Duma.

The standards of adoption agencies should also be raised, he said.

Russia recently raised the alarm over the purported mistreatment of the children adopted by foreign nationals, in particular in the US.

Lavrov said Moscow had sought from authorities in the US state of Wisconsin to prosecute the adoptive parents of four children from Russia, known by their Russian surname as the Zhivodrovs, for allegedly repeatedly subjecting them to violence.

"The [US] federal authorities are not giving us any documents; the investigation is not yet finished. But we have appealed directly to the Wisconsin authorities.

On Tuesday, the ministry criticised the decision by Texas prosecutors not to charge the adoptive parents of a Russian toddler who died in January.

A three-year-old Max Shatto died Jan 21, almost three months after he and his younger brother were adopted from a Russian orphanage in the Pskov region.

The death came just weeks after Russia enacted a ban on Americans adopting Russian children.

Russian officials blame American adoptive parents for the deaths of 20 Russian children in the US during the past two decades.