STOCKHOLM, December 2. /TASS/. Russia will soon formulate specific proposals on an initiative by Russian President Vladimir Putin on border security guarantees and Moscow expects the West to view them seriously, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on the sidelines of a meeting of OSCE foreign ministers on Thursday.
"We want the accords that the president mentioned and we will seek to reach to be necessarily legally binding. In the immediate future, we will formulate specific proposals to our Western counterparts and will expect them to treat them seriously," Russia’s top diplomat said.
As Lavrov pointed out, on the sidelines of a meeting of the OSCE foreign ministers in Stockholm, Russia explained Putin’s initiative on border security guarantees to the West.
"In our speech at the session and in our contacts with Western counterparts, we focused on explaining and promoting the initiative that President [of Russia Vladimir] Putin put forward for the first time at an enlarged board meeting in our ministry and reiterated it in the Kremlin yesterday," Lavrov said.
Moscow is interested in the accords that would take into account the security guarantees of all countries, the Russian foreign minister stressed.
"We do not want any unilateral privileges but will insist that these accords be treated seriously," Lavrov said.
Russian President Putin who spoke at a ceremony of receiving foreign ambassadors’ credentials in the Kremlin on December 1 suggested commencing substantive talks on achieving legal guarantees of stopping NATO’s expansion to the East.
The Russian leader also emphasized that Russia "needs precisely legally binding guarantees because Western counterparts have not honored their previous oral commitments."