Western policy in Middle East causes migrant crisis, escalates terrorist threat - Russian Foreign Ministry
MOSCOW. Nov 20 (Interfax) - The Western support to the extremist opposition and the policy of the removal of undesirable regimes in the Middle East and North Africa are the cause of both the migrant crisis in Europe and escalated levels of the terrorist threat, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.
"The 'boomerang' thrown by our Western partners in the form of indiscriminative pumping of money and arms in the extremist opposition and their information support returns with terror attacks in their own cities," head of the Russian Foreign Ministry department on new challenges and threats Ilya Rogachyov has told Kommersant in an interview.
"It is absolutely obvious that the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe and the escalating level of the terrorist threat are caused, in the first turn, by the policy of the removal of undesirable regimes in the Middle East and North Africa region in the past decade," the diplomat said.
He pointed to situational differences between the United States and West European countries.
"Our European colleagues are helping the Americans in a rather uncritical manner to implement the concept of 'democratization of the Greater Middle East'; for some reason they lose sight of the fact that they rather than the United States protected by two oceans are primarily exposed to the risks created by destabilization in a number of countries," Rogachyov noted.
"Almost five years ago, we were persuading them to not do that [as regards Libya] and warned that the entire Arab world would be shaken and the entire 'Muslim street' would radicalize. In addition to the 'spread' of weapons around the region, law enforcement agencies and security services would be paralyzed," the diplomat said.
He also recalled the international legal dimension, for instance, the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and the way the UN Security Council resolution on the no-fly zone in Libya had been interpreted. "By the way, the French protested against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 together with us," Rogachyov said.
Decisions generated by the intellectual and political elites of Europe caused bewilderment, he said.
"To my mind, the activity of the Europeans in the Southern Mediterranean, their own 'soft underbelly', much more complied with 'democratization' concept ideologies than with national interests," the diplomat said.
"There come the consequences for international relations - the stable secular 'undemocratic' regimes were toppled by force, in particular through indiscriminative 'pumping' in all kinds of the opposition. Who has gained from that? At least, not the population of Iraq, Libya and Syria," Rogachyov said.
