Foreign Minister Lavrov, speaking to the 79th session of the UN General Assembly on Sept . 28, reviewed the many empty promises and agreements of the UN and other institutions over the past decades, and posed a new architecture based on cooperation and the principles contained (but often ignored) in the UN Charter. He began with the Summit of the Future last week, which made wonderful statements about the reform of the UN, but implied that they are not likely to be carried out. He then reviewed the history of meetings and their proposals which never got implemented:
• The Millennium Summit in 2000 which proclaimed the goal to “free the peoples from the scourge of war” and achieve dramatic economic goals by 2015. However, Lavrov said: “Two years later the United States of America, at the head of the coalition of the willing, invaded Iraq—the country which has yet to get over the devastating consequences of this affair—under a ridiculous pretext, without the mandate of the UN Security Council.”
• The 2005 World Summit declared its commitment to establishing a just peace in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. “But this sacred commitment did not prevent the United States and its allies from emboldening Georgia’s then-leader Mikheil Saakashvili to launch an armed aggression against the people of South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers in 2008,” and three years later the destruction of Libya.
• “Antonio Guterres, just like Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon before him, has put forward an initiative under the slogan of a new start for global cooperation. This is a wonderful idea. Who could disagree? But what global cooperation is there to talk about, when the West has trampled all those unshakeable values of the globalization that speakers on the podium talked so much about, trying to convince us that they would give everyone equal access to the goods of modern civilization?”
• “Cuba has been subject to a trade blockade for more than sixty years, while the overwhelming majority of members of the international community have called for it to be lifted.”
• “Washington has blocked the normal work of the WTO to settle disputes and a reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, whose structure has long ceased to reflect the real balance of power in the world economy and finance.”
So it will likely be with the “Pact of the Future,” from last week, which was drafted “without a single plenary round of talks where all countries would be present. Instead, the work was done under the control of Western manipulators. As a result, the Pact already swelled the ranks of declarations written in beautiful English without even being born.”
As to the UN Security Council, Lavrov noted “the sabotage of the resolutions on the Kosovo settlement and the Dayton Accords on Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most egregious example is the postponement for more than 80 years of consensus resolutions on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel.” He then reviewed the mass genocide in Gaza and the spreading of Israeli terror in the West Bank and now Lebanon.
As to terrorism, Lavrov says: “The ‘track record’ of those who demand that the rest of the world play by their rules should not be forgotten. The invasion of Afghanistan and the inglorious twenty-year presence of a well-known coalition there was accompanied by the emergence of al-Qaeda. The creation of the Islamic State was a direct result of the aggression against Iraq. The start of the war in Syria gave birth to Jabhat al-Nusra (now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), and the destruction of Libya opened the floodgates for terrorism in the Sahara-Sahel region and for millions of illegal immigrants in Europe. We urge all those who care about the future of their countries and people to be extremely cautious about the new plots of the inventors of these very rules.”
