ULAANBAATAR, April 14. /TASS/. Moscow hopes for restoration to earlier level of relations with Washington and states it is not interested in confrontation with the US, NATO, or EU, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
"Russia does not seek confrontation with the US, nor with NATO or the European Union, and it has never initiated a confrontation of the kind," he said in a lecture at the Mongolian foreign ministry. "Clearly, the confrontation only affects the efforts on restoring the optimal trend in the global development."
"We hope the Russian-US relations will return to the normal trajectory," he said. "This may be done only on the basis of mutual respect and balance of interests."
"Russia and the US today continue rather active cooperation," Lavrov said. "As co-chairs of the International Group of Syria Support we have managed to agree a roadmap for the settlement, managed to expand the humanitarian access to the people there, who need it, and have provided for beginning of a political process."
"Currently, Moscow and Washington continue an active dialogue on these and other issues," he said.
US needs cooperation with Russia
The diplomat pointed out that the latest visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow shows that the United States needs the support of Russia and bilateral cooperation in solving major international issues.
"The West realizes step by step that it is impossible to isolate Russia," Lavrov said during a lecture at Mongolia’s Foreign Ministry. Kerry’s visit to Moscow in late March also signaled Washington’s "demand for carrying out a joint effort on the burning regional issues," he added.
Russia has consistently called on the US partners to build steady and predictable cooperation on an equal basis, Lavrov said.
"The demand for such cooperation is explained by reality of the modern world where the answers to common problems and challenges can be searched only based on collective and balanced approaches and through unifying efforts of all the key players," he said.
Attempts to hedge off terrorism
The minister has also focused on the recent series of terrorist attacks in many countries of the world.
"The continuing series of terror attacks throughout the world is not only the demonstration of the barbaric nature, of ideology and practice of the Islamic State (outlawed in Russia - TASS), it is also a confirmation proving in the modern mutually dependent world any attempts to make special oases of security or walls in hopes to hedge off the alarming neighbors are doomed to failure," Lavrov said in a lecture he delivered at the Mongolian foreign ministry.
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"Unfortunately, the international community has not managed to make a timely repulse (to terrorism)," he continued. "The reason were the ambitions, the bad practice of geopolitical engineering, the dividing of terrorists into those bad and those who could be used in own interests."
The attempts "to push own interests, to insist on unification of own values and models, including by force, are bound to bring poor results."
"Actions of the kind have caused a vacuum of power in several countries in the Middle East and in northern Africa, what was used immediately by terrorists of the so-called Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra (also outlawed in Russia) and other terrorist groups," Lavrov said.