Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov presented Russia’s proposal for a new security architecture for Southwest Asia, the Persian Gulf and North Africa at the Valdai Conference in Moscow. While presented in the past, Lavrov went into some details as several questions on the proposal were asked. Lavrov said the proposal would be similar to the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe, which came out of the Helsinki Conference of 1975 and currently includes the countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The proposal did not prevent Lavrov from criticizing how the OSCE has been instrumentalized by the U.S. and the West in its campaign against the Russian Federation. Nonetheless he said, with certain crucial modifications, providing a platform comprising all the stakeholders in this broad region could go a long way to resolve the current conflicts, including reaching final settlements regarding Syria, Libya, Iran and the Arab Gulf states, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Such an organization would have to be based on respect for sovereign rights of nations based on international law and the United Nations Charter. Lavrov stated that it would contrast with the current U.S. policy of building NATO-type blocs in Asia, as it is doing now against China.
