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Russia’s Lavrov condemns illegal supplies of weaponry

Those who engage in illegal supplies of weaponry encroach grossly on the universal human rights

UNITED NATIONS, September 29 (Itar-Tass) – Those who engage in illegal supplies of weaponry encroach grossly on the universal human rights, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday as he took the floor at the 67th session of the UN General Assembly.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says every person has the right to an international order under which his or her personal rights will be observed, and that’s why those who use military force and sanctions in bypass of the UN Charter or engage in illegal supplies of weaponry or blanch over terrorists encroach on this right crudely,” Lavrov said.

“The eventual goal of conflict settlement is the assuring of the right to life and other fundamental human rights, be it political, economic or social ones,” he said. “Events of the past few years have shown graphically that observance of human rights is impossible without durable peace and sustained development.”

“Care for human rights should serve the goals of assuring the security and development of personality and it shouldn’t provide pretexts for meddling with the internal affairs of one or another state,” Lavrov added.

He urged the international community to hold further discussions over the ‘responsibility to protect’ concept on the basis of the principles set out by the UN Charter.

“Its further discussion should follow the guidelines that were coordinated at the UN summit in 2005 and were reaffirmed in what concerns observance of the UN Charter in the process of reacting to inter-state conflicts,” Lavrov said. “Protection of civilian populations is too knotty a problem and it can’t be used as a ploy for achieving political objectives.”

“The initiatives formulated by Brazil and a number of other countries have helped expose the ambiguity of the ‘responsibility to protect’ concept and may be helpful in moving towards a consensus on the issue,” Lavrov said.

In 2000, the then Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan initiated work on a new legislative norm that would be alternative to humanitarian interventions and that would give the grounds for an armed defense of human rights without consent from the political leadership of a state, which encroaches upon these rights.

In December 2000, a special international commission for interference and state sovereignty submitted a report saying that if one or another state is incapable of averting or stopping the suffering of its people then the international community has a duty to interfere but the unfolding of a military operation is admissible only in the situation where it would be a measure of last resort.

A number of countries, including the U.S., spoke in favor of adopting the ‘responsibility to protect’ concept in the course of the 2005 UN-sponsored world summit. They agreed that the UN Security Council should have a prerogative to pass decisions on interventions of this kind.