Lavrov: West lets Islamic State 'genie' out of bottle in Middle East

MOSCOW, October 20./TASS/. The West has let the genies of Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra (both banned in Russia) out of the bottle, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an international conference on the Middle East on Thursday.

"There is no need to speak about the complexity of the current period in international relations. It is a breakthrough period when a new polycentric architecture of international relations continues to be formed. We see how this process is confronting active opposition on the part of those who is unwilling to part with the habitual role of so-called global arbiter," Lavrov emphasized.

He believes that all this contributes to global and regional instability and increases a potential for conflicts. "What we see in the Middle East and Northern Africa is a graphic illustration of that," the Russian foreign minister went on to say.

"The disintegration of state structures created numerous seats of instability such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya. Such state of things is the result of malpractice of geopolitical engineering of western colleagues; the interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states; attempts to change undesirable regimes and the so-called democratization according to one’s own templates," Lavrov said.

"The practice of provoking controlled chaos may lead to very negative consequences," Lavrov said. "The West did not hide its negative attitude to our stance saying that ‘we are on the wrong side of history’," the Russian foreign minister explained. "As a result, not one but several genies have been let out of the bottle. The most dangerous are the Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and the groups affiliated with them.

"Under these circumstances we believe that our priority task, as the Russian president stressed a year ago, is to unite efforts in the struggle against terrorism and extremism and create a broad global front against terrorism," the Russian foreign minister stressed.