‘West aims to vertically structure humanity’ – Russia’s Lavrov at UN General Assembly (Full Speech)

TND Editor’s Note:  Lavrov also sat with Bloomberg’s Olivia Sterns for an exclusive interview.  Click here to watch it.

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The US-led Western block rejects the principle of the equality of sovereign states secured by the UN Charter while advocating democracy in the international arena, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressing the UNGA.

“The US-led Western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights in individual countries, is acting in the international arena from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the UN Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad,” Lavrov said at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Saturday.

The Russian foreign minister elaborated that there was an “increasingly obvious contradiction between the need for collective action by partners to produce proper responses to common challenges and some countries’ drive for dominance and revival of the archaic bloc mentality based on barrack-like discipline and flawed ‘us and them’ logic”.

Lavrov added that Russia was willing to compromise and ready to balance interests only based on mutual respect and if the dialogue is “honest, respectful and equal”.

According to the minister the “policy of ultimatums, the philosophy of superiority and domination” run counter to the needs of the 21st century, including the formation of a “polycentric and democratic world order”.

Lavrov stressed that the creation of new dividing lines is unacceptable in Europe saying that “no one has a monopoly on the truth” and no one can customize global and regional processes to “suit their needs.”

Joint efforts can only be built on the principles of mutual respect and mutual consideration of interests, as it is done in the framework of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), G20 or the UN Security Council, said Lavrov.

The results of such efforts can be seen in the positive progress of the Iranian nuclear program and the successful completion of the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons stockpile.

According to Lavrov, the examples “to follow” are the Minsk agreements dated September 5 and 19 which presented a roadmap on the ways out of the Ukrainian crisis and set a compromise on the date of Ukraine’s EU association agreement coming into force.

He said Russia had consistently called for “harmonizing” integration projects in Europe and Eurasia.

“The agreement on political benchmarks and timelines of such a ‘convergence of integrations’ would become a real contribution to the work of the OSCE on the topic of ‘Helsinki+40′.”

“Another crucial area of this work would be to launch pragmatic discussions free of ideology on politico-military architecture in the Euro-Atlantic, so that not only NATO and CSTO members but all the countries of the region including Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia enjoy equal and indivisible security and not have to make a false choice of: ‘either with us or against us’,” Lavrov added.

READ MORE: War and Peace (& Economic Terror): 9 highlights from the 69th UNGA

The Western bloc has taken a course of “vertical structuring of humanity” according to its standards, said Lavrov describing the latter as “far from harmless”.

“Proclaiming victory in the Cold War and the onset of ‘history’s end’ the US and the EU committed to expanding their geopolitical space without balancing the legitimate interests of all the peoples of Europe.”

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RT report reprinted with permission.