MINSK, November 21. /TASS/. Russia will resist the West’s attempts to create within the UN Secretariat a special body having inter-state functions for checking compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference following a joint board meeting of the Russian and Belarussian foreign ministries on Wednesday.
"Russia and a number of other countries sharing a responsible approach to the problems of non-proliferation and elimination of biological weapons have unsuccessfully tried to achieve the creation of a mechanism for verifying compliance with that convention, verifying how the member-countries comply with their obligations," he said. "Now the Western countries have been trying to push through the UN Secretariat their idea of creating within the Secretariat some new body having the powers that should in fact belong to an inter-state, inter-government mechanism. This is an alarming sign."
Lavrov described the situation as "an obvious attempt to put pressures on international functionaries at the UN Secretariat in order to pushing ahead with one’s own approaches, thus bypassing legitimate procedures."
"Examples of such actions in other spheres are many and we will keep talking about that openly and frankly, putting questions to our Western partners," Lavrov said. "They try to dodge a serious discussion on this theme, but I am certain that they will fail to sweep this issue under the carpet. They will have to reply to the quite legitimate concerns that not only Russia but many other countries have."
Lavrov pointed to the "risks international law was confronted with in the context of the West’s policies aimed at artificially retaining domination in international affairs."
"This is regrettable, because it would be in the interests of the entire international community to devise collective approaches to modern threats, and not to make others agree with one’s own vision and one’s own unilateral approaches," he said.