Terror funding must be stopped via UN SC mechanisms - Lavrov
GENEVA. March 2 (Interfax) - Closing channels of finance and supporting terrorists organizations, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), will play a decisive role in countering terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
"Our joint capability to reliably close off any channel of support for ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and the like, by employing the UN SC (United Nations Security Council) mechanisms will be crucial," he said at a high-level event in Geneva on Monday, which focused on the protection of persecuted Christians.
"To prevent jihadists from winning the hearts and minds of young people and recruiting them is another, no less urgent task," the minister said.
"We support the initiatives of the region's Christian and Muslim leaders, aimed at forming a united front to counter attempts by extremists of every hue to desecrate and distort the high moral principles of the great world religions," he said.
"Yet another conclusion from the tragic events in the Middle East and North Africa consists in rejecting, once and for all, the temptation to hold entire nations hostage to geopolitical ambitions being materialized by way of gross meddling with affairs of sovereign states," the minister said.