Moscow, June 21. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told reporters that he had discussed the situation around the Iran nuclear deal and progress on the Korean Peninsula at the talks with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
According to Russia’s top diplomat, the meeting with the UN chief was productive and substantive. "We spoke, of course, about the complex situation in international relations," Lavrov said. "We believe this stems primarily from attempts to promote unilateral approaches to solving various international problems at the expense of seeking collective answers to modern challenges. Unfortunately, this negative trend affects the work of the UN Security Council as well."
"[We] exchanged views on the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program after the United States announced its withdrawal from that fundamental international legal document," Lavrov said. "We also discussed some new factors, which inspire certain optimism with regard to developments on the Korean Peninsula and around it."
The Russian minister noted that the discussion of such key global issues as the situation in Syria, Libya and Yemen was difficult. "We spoke of the crises that persist on the African continent and are still difficult to resolve and discussed in detail what the UN and its Secretariat could do to facilitate progress in all those issues," Lavrov said. "It was very important for us to hear how the secretary general envisions the ways of overcoming the old and new conflicts in the world, whose number, unfortunately, is not declining.".