MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called on Friday for returning to joint formats of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement.
"We raised the issue of the US’ stance, which has long wanted to show the result of its sole intermediary mission to the global community in the form of some deal of the century," Lavrov said at a news conference after meeting with Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki. "No one has seen this deal yet."
Washington has strived for many years to provide only Israel’s interests in the issue of the Middle East settlement, the Russian foreign minister said. "It is clear that an agreement cannot be reached without the United States, but the US will not reach an agreement individually either," he noted. "So, it is necessary to return to collective formats and the quartet of international intermediaries [Russia, the US, the UN and the European Union] in close coordination with the League of Arab States."
"Considering our special relations not just with Palestine, but with Israel as well, we want to help reach a stable agreement which would lawfully provide Israel’s legitimate interests in the sphere of security," the Russian minister stressed. "Problems in this region, like in any other, should not be tackled based on ultimata, demands or dictate, but only through dialogue. It is necessary to sit down and reach an agreement."
The Russian foreign minister pointed to Washington’s attempts to undermine the international legal framework of the Palestinian-Israeli settlement which are enshrined in the UN compulsory decisions. "We can see the easiness with which the US abandon other international legal agreements, such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] on the Iran nuclear program, which was approved by the UN Security Council, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF Treaty]," he explained. "The attempts to replace international law with some rules that the Western countries are making up themselves and trying to impress on others is a very dangerous trend."
On May 8, US President Donald Trump declared Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA - a deal which was signed in 2015 and restricted Tehran’s nuclear developments in exchange for the abolishment of sanctions of the UN Security Council and unilateral restrictive measures of the US and EU. Trump promised to both return the old sanctions and introduce new ones, and the Department of State declared the intention to nullify Iran’s revenues from oil exports. Russia, the UK, Germany, China and France did not approve of the US’ withdrawal from the deal and remain committed to it.