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Russia’s foreign minister: Unipolar World “Not Happening”
By Mike Sullivan
Global Research, March 23, 2007
Voice of Russia 23 March 2007
Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-s-foreign-minister-unipolar-world-not-happening/5157

Echoing President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has gone on record saying that a “unipolar world is just not happening” and that this is a hard fact the US should learn to live with.

Sergei Lavrov said that just as Washington was losing its grip on global politics, the Russian factor was assuming an ever-growing dimension. According to the minister, the West was parting ways with its monopoly influence on the globalization processes now that new centers of power were emerging in various parts of the globe providing an answer to the question about how to deal with the problem of management in the modern world. “Aggressive and one-sided responses add fuel to international conflicts making it impossible for any single country to control the overall situation in the world,” Lavrov explained.

Now we have to wake up to the fact that many problems the world is now grappling with should be handled by all and this is something the Americans will have to live with.

Elaborating further on Russia’s unhappiness with the whole situation, Sergei Lavrov said that without Washington’s hardheaded approach, problems like Iran’s nuclear dossier and the situation in Iraq would have been solved a long time ago. As to the Iranians’ refusal to comply with international demands, much of the problem, including the Korean peninsula, stem from Washington’ refusal to mend fences with Tehran on the basis of internationally recognized principles. Lavrov believes Washington should display similar flexibility when dealing with Tehran.

Wrapping up the Iranian issue, Sergei Lavrov advised the US to not even try to use that country’s nuclear dossier to its own benefit, a clear reference to Washington’s deployment of interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe ostensibly to fend off a missile strike from Iran.

No matter what the true reason for the ongoing deployment of the US missile defenses in Europe, this will definitely sour Russia-NATO relations. The North Atlantic Alliance plans to set up interceptor missiles in Poland, Estonia and Latvia, much to Russia’s chagrin because, as Lavrov put it, NATO was turning into a fig leaf for a set of unilateral measures that pose a real threat to Russia. “We would hate to drive a wedge between NATO and the EU, but we wouldn’t like to see the transatlantic link between Europe and the US firming up at Russia’s expense either,” Lavrov added.

Even though the main emphasis of his speech was a stinging critique of the United States, Sergei Lavrov said there would be no cold war between Russia and America. “This doesn’t mean, however, that we will not criticize Washington’s foreign policy,” he added. “I’m sure that relations between our two countries must not be allowed to depend on the views of whoever has access to the President’s ear at the moment, but rather on the importance our partnership has on the future of the world we all live in.”

Lavrov then advised Washington not to fence themselves in in the face of the Iraqi crisis and ahead of next year’s presidential elections but, instead, to actively participate in renewing the mutually-beneficial partnership with Russia. Especially now that Russia and the US have achieved such a breakthrough in the talks dealing with Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization…

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