UNITED NATIONS, April 25. /TASS/. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres should be focused on the Middle East settlement, seeing as how he is the moderator of the Middle East Quartet, among other things, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

He made the statement at a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

"We are calling on the leadership of the UN Secretariat and the secretary general himself to pay increased attention to complying with the decisions of the UN Security Council, especially those related to the Middle East settlement. We would also like the UN Secretary General to be more proactive in fulfilling his duties as moderator of the Quartet, without waiting for permission," Lavrov said.

The minister called attention to the fact that "the UN secretary general recently on his own initiative announced a meeting on Afghanistan for early May."

"We support this, but why not take the initiative and convene a meeting of the Quartet? It is in his prerogatives," he said. "I believe that in such conditions, there’s special demand for the role of the UN as a coordinator of multilateral diplomacy."