MOSCOW, December 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday met with members of the foreign ministry’s scientific council to discuss issues of ensuring security of Russia’s southern territories.
“Participants in the meeting discussed a range of problems of ensuring Russia’s security in the southern direction, including in the context of the development of the situation in and around Afghanistan,” the Russian foreign ministry reported. “Apart from that, they exchanged views on various aspects of the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, which has been showing signs of increased turbulence.”
Participants in the meeting agreed that “efficient settlement of crises and curbing growing violence and spreading extremism and intolerance are possible only through joint efforts of the world community on the basis of international law,” the ministry noted. In this context, they “noted positive experience of cooperation between Russia and the United States in the search for optimally balanced solutions to the Syrian crisis and the Iranian nuclear program.”
Experts expressed confidence that the international efforts should be based on general principles of overcoming conflict situations, such as “the respect of peoples’ right to determine their fate, the support to political ways of conflict settlement through inclusive dialogue between parties concerned without external interference, the protection of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and the repudiation of double standards.