TUNIS, December 21. /TASS/. Russia sees that every time the Russian delegation visits the Middle East, the West issues some kind of warning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference on the results of his visit to Tunisia.
"The current trip is not only to Tunisia, it began yesterday. <...> I have not asked questions about how Western countries accompanied these plans and the visits themselves. I don't want to go into details now," Lavrov said. "But we know for sure that every trip by a Russian delegation, including the Foreign Ministry, to countries in the Arab world, the Middle East and North Africa, is always preceded by demarches by Western diplomats who warn, caution, perhaps even hint at the consequences," the top diplomat pointed out.
"We announced what is no secret, it is last year's visit to Cairo, to the headquarters of the League of Arab States, which was preceded by public demarches from the American, British, European ambassadors with a direct call to cancel Lavrov's speech at the organization’s headquarters," the foreign minister said. "When it was explained to them that Russia has its own relations with the League of Arab States and they build these relations on the basis of existing agreements, then the Western diplomats began to ask the representatives of the League that after my speech the Arab countries should condemn Russia's actions in Ukraine. They were also told that the League has its own position on how and where certain crisis situations have developed and are developing," Lavrov stressed.
According to him, there was also a third request from Western ambassadors: "at least don't take pictures with him [Lavrov]". "I'm not joking, and I'm only talking about this because all this was made public by the secretariat of the League itself. They even issued a special document on the results of this inappropriate demarche from Western diplomats. During my visit yesterday to Morocco and today to Tunisia, I did not talk about such happenings, but this trend continues, there is no doubt about it," the top diplomat said. "We have certain information that the West is sending instructions to all its ambassadors to behave in a similar way as they did on the eve of our visit to the headquarters of the League of Arab States last year," the foreign minister emphasized.