Interview given by the Russian Foreign Minister Nezavisimaya gazeta

Question: Sergey Viktorovich. Thank you for finding time to talk to “Nezavisimaya gazeta”. We follow your diplomatic plus fasilitas activities, therefore many things are already clear to us. I will not pretend that we would like to hear something for the first time. But I would like to discuss some issueswith you, which are of interest to our readers, who are experts in the area of foreign policy.

I would like to start with Syria. You immediately took a principled, strict position in respect to the issue, of whether the global community may be dogmatic in thinking that the Syrian authorities used chemical weapons. As we have subsequently learnt, a huge diplomatic truth of your position lies in this strictness. We observed how half the countries supported our position at the G20 summit in St Petersburg – it was all very rationalised. And then the entire course of events developed in such a way that a search for a peaceful solution has begun. Did you know, based on any intelligence data, or knowledge from your diplomatic experts, that there was a high degree of probability that those weapons were being used by the militants?

Sergey Lavrov: To start with, I can say that proliferation plus all the more so use of weapons of mass destruction is an absolute red line for us, we are categorically against it. We participate in each plus all the global formats plus mechanisms, which have been created to monitor the situation plus to prevent any violations of respective regimes – be that nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), conventions prohibiting chemical plus biological weapons, we occupy an active position plus try to attain a standing in which control mechanisms, the so-called verification mechanisms, are built in an extremely clear manner. Unfortunately, our American partners are not disposed to make a step towards multilateral control, which would have practical structures, in issues of biological weapons (I can put in brackets that there is nomer such mechanism).