PARIS, November 12. /TASS/. The attitude to Russia as an international policeman in the Middle East is an exclusively Western invention, which has nothing to do with reality, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Russian session of the Paris Peace Forum on Tuesday.

In the course of the discussion the panel’s moderator asked Lavrov for a comment on claims that Russia had become the Middle East’s policeman.

This is a "Western invention," Lavrov replied. "This logic is not applicable to what we witness in Syria," he stated.

Lavrov recalled that the Syrian crisis had begun with crimes committed by the Western countries in the Middle East. "Don’t forget that the Syrian crisis started against a background of huge crimes committed in the Middle East not by us. One can recall the moment when George Bush Jr. declared the victory of democracy in Iraq. Look at Iraq, at what is going on there now. Following the invasion in Iraq in 2003, ISIS was established and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was released from the American prison and became number one in this Caliphate. The aggression against Libya triggered several waves of terrorism in Africa and of illegal migration into Europe."

"When the Syrian government was about to be toppled by ISIS, when the terrorists were on the outskirts of Damascus, and when the president of Syria requested our help, yes, we helped. And I believe we did the right thing because apart from Idlib and some areas on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River the terrorists are not in control of that country and the legitimate government is back in the driver’s seat," Lavrov said.

Asked if everything should be blamed on the West, Lavrov replied with a pinch of irony that the West was entirely responsible only for its own mistakes.

Russia’s presence in Syria

Russia’s presence in Syria must not be interpreted as a manifestation of neocolonialism as its taskforce is deployed in that country legitimately, to help fight against terrorism, the Russian foreign minister stated.

"We have been invited, unlike the United States, unlike France, unlike Germany, unlike other members of the so-called anti-terrorist coalition who are present in Syria illegitimately. We have been invited by the legitimate government. I don’t believe this fits into the description of colonialism," the top diplomat responded to a question on whether Russia could be seen as a neocolonial power in the Middle East.

He noted that the world will be marking the anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1960. "I believe we should remember how this declaration was adopted and what is still not resolved. Since some countries did not receive independence as was required by the General Assembly," he noted.

"Some say we should not recall the colonial times but must live for the moment. But many people, including in Europe, want to reopen the issues related to the end of World War II, which was 20 years before decolonization. Decolonization is a much younger phenomenon <...> it is an open issue how exactly decolonization took place and whether it really ended, whether the present-day colonial peoples should remain under the colonial powers' control," he stressed.

Control of oil fields in Syria

The United States seeks to separate areas east of the Euphrates River from Syria in order to control oil fields, the Russian foreign minister claimed.

According to him, Russia "has been promoting projects together with the Syrian government, inviting all others to create conditions to modernize infrastructure for the return of refugees, so that the country could get back to normal life." However, Lavrov pointed out that the "United States categorically denies the need for this." The Americans also prohibit all their allies, including NATO countries, the European Union and the countries of the region, from investing in any project on the territory controlled by the Syrian government, the Russian foreign minister stated.

"On the other hand, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, they do everything to build quasi-state structures and they ask the Persian Gulf countries to invest heavily so that they can create a local administration based on the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish YPG and others, with a blatant intention to separate this part of Syria and to control the oil fields there," Lavrov emphasized.

The Russian top diplomat said earlier that Moscow called for resolving the issue of the eastern bank of the Euphrates through dialogue between Damascus and Ankara, and planned to facilitate contacts between them.

Russia's policy in Syria with regard to US 

Russia has never designed its foreign policy just to do as much harm to the United States as possible as far as the Syrian settlement is concerned, Sergey Lavrov stated.

"Never ever have we been designing our foreign policy just to be nasty to the United States," he said.

Lavrov stressed that Russia was the only country, which talked to everybody in the Middle East. As for Syria, Moscow talks to the government, the opposition, the Kurds, and, of course, the Americans, he went on to say.

"In 2013, we were very close with the United States to a deal how to resolve the Syrian conflict. The deal, which we struck with John Kerry, was that the government Air Force would not fly at all and that any operations by the US Air Force and by the Russian Air Force would be agreed between us. In other words, the US and Russia had a veto on each other’s actions in Syria," Russia’s top diplomat recalled.

According to Lavrov, the only condition was that the United States should separate the armed opposition from terrorists, specifically Jabhat al-Nusra (outlawed in Russia). "They [the Americans] never managed to do this. I have reasons to believe on the basis of real examples of recent years that the United States still supports al-Nusra Front in spite of the fact that this organization has been listed in the United States as terrorist," he added.