Lavrov says hoping Trump stays committed to Ukraine settlement principles elaborated at Anchorage summit
MOSCOW/MINSK. Oct 28 (Interfax) - Moscow is hoping that U.S. President Donald Trump will stay committed to the Ukraine settlement principles elaborated at the Russian-U.S. summit in Anchorage, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"We are hoping that President Trump still sincerely wishes to settle the Ukrainian crisis and will stay committed to the principles elaborated at the Anchorage summit," Lavrov said at the Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security.
Moscow is hoping that the logic of a long-term settlement in Ukraine will prevail in Washington, Lavrov said.
"I am hoping that, after all, the logic accepted by the United States, the logic of long-term peace, will prevail," Lavrov said at a press conference on the sidelines of the Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security.
Lavrov said that Moscow expects that the positive reaction from Washington to Russian President Vladimir Putin's New START proposal will be translated into an official statement.
"I hope that we will be able to receive a positive response from the United States to the proposal that they also agreed to unilaterally comply with the quantitative parameters stipulated in the New START. [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump has repeatedly spoken positively about this initiative put forward by President Putin, so we are actually hoping that these positive reactions will be translated into some kind of official announcement," he said.
Lavrov also criticized NATO for attempts to expand alliance's area of responsibility across Eurasia.
"One cannot help but be concerned that NATO is artificially expanding its area of responsibility far beyond the Euro-Atlantic region. For this purpose, they have taken advantage of the thesis about the indivisibility of Euro-Atlantic security, the so-called Indo-Pacific region. When we ask how this relates to the Washington Treaty establishing NATO, we are told that the organization remains a purely defensive alliance and exists to repel threats to the territories of its member states," Lavrov said in Minsk.
"But, they say, these threats now come from everywhere, even from the waters of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. NATO is seeking to gain a foothold for itself in the Pacific Ocean, undermining the very foundations of the regional security architecture, which has been built around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)'s central role for decades. And this is being done with the obvious goal of deterring China, isolating Russia, and confronting North Korea," he said.
"NATO is not neglecting other Eurasian regions, namely, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia. Moreover, it is working with these sub-regions individually, rather than in the context of concerns about pan-continental, pan-Eurasian interests," Lavrov said.
"They are trying to gain a foothold and influence these processes everywhere, and this influence is, in most cases, extremely negative due to the alliance's aggressive policies. A reasonable question arises: if this is the general trend, do we want our entire vast, beautiful continent to be turned into NATO's reign? We cannot agree with this," he said.
