Press-encounter by Ambassador Vitaly I. Churkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, after UN Security Council session on Middle East
Press-encounter by Ambassador Vitaly Churkin
after UN Security Council session on Middle East
October 22, 2015
Full transcript:
Q: Do you have expectations regarding tomorrow’s meeting (in Vienna)?
Churkin: There are going to be two sets of meetings. One is the quartet. But the whole thing starts with the bilateral between Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry and then with Saudi and Turkish foreign ministers. The point which Minister Lavrov was making and which I repeated today at the UNSC - we believe that the group of countries must be broadened and include Jordan, Iran.
Q: This is regarding Syria?
Churkin: Yes. In order to develop the maximum impact the group must be expanded and include some other countries: Iran, Jordan. Egypt is very important.
Q: Do you think you will be able to convince the US to find a solution in Syria?
Churkin: There has been a certain evolution in the American position. They are coming closer to our understanding of the complexity of the situation in Syria, but we’ll see what Secretary Kerry is going to bring to Vienna.
Q: Samantha Power raised some accusations today regarding bombings…
Churkin: I was surprised that she was quoting “Reuters”. Are they in Washington, CIA and military intelligence reading news media? It makes your work even more important I suppose. We’ve made a very honest offer to them. We offered them to join this Center which we set up together with Iraq, Iran and Syria in Baghdad to share information about terrorists. We requested them to give us the information whom we should bomb and whom we should not. They refused. So now they are telling us that we are doing a wrong thing without telling us what is the right thing to do and quoting various agencies about impact and what is going on. I think it’s rather strange.
Q.: They said that your intervention in Syria has complicated things.
Churkin: They have been there for a long time. The coalition has been bombing for over a year. I think the policy which the US has been conducting is a policy of endless conflict because it did not produce any realistic prospect for the conflict to be resolved. They’ve been setting target which is not attainable like the toppling of Assad regime and the removal of Assad. And they’ve been bombing with no visible progress in terms of impact on ISIL. They’ve been preparing so-called moderate fighters. And then an American general said in Congress that maybe four of them are fighting out there after a year of training and spending 500 million dollars on the program. It does not look like something which could conceivably, in a realistic timeframe produce positive results. Now we hope that with our intervention the Syrian government will feel confident enough to do the things that we are asking them to do. Including things on humanitarian side and also things that would give more than a chance for the political process.
Q: Is that true what the Wall Street Journal said that there is a rift between Russia and Iran?
Churkin: I don’t see any rift. We have discussions and consultations with them. We want them to be involved closer in the diplomatic work. It’s not our fault that the US and some others do not want to see them at the table. In my view it does not mean that Iran should not be involved. Even Washington does believe they should be involved. But there are those strange diplomatic circumstances when they don’t want to be in the same room with the countries etc. Iran, let’s face it, developed some interesting ideas, proposals over the years during the Syrian conflict. If developed properly they may allow to achieve a breakthrough. It is irresponsible not to have them involved. So we are upset that the Americans and some others object to their direct participation in those discussions.
Q: Are there differences between Russia and Iran?
Churkin: I’m not so intimately involved in the discussions. There might be some nuances of approach. When experts meet they have knowledge of the complexity of the situation. I cannot say that we see eye to eye to everything - that would probably be an exaggeration. I’m not privy enough to all those discussion.
Q.: About Samantha Power accusations on the killing of hundreds of civilians in Russian airstrikes. Are they baseless?
Churkin: This is what I find very strange. Under these circumstances there is always a propaganda war going on, all sorts of things are being cited. We are conducting this campaign with great transparency. Our Ministry of Defense is doing daily briefings emphasizing what targets are hit. I’m not seeing anything of this sort done by the US or the coalition in the course of their campaign over a year. We are doing it transparently. We are trying to do it responsibly. I have not heard any confirmed reports of the civilian casualties. And here we can take a lesson from our American friends. When there are reports of casualties their military say: we cannot confirm that. In other situations they refuse to talk about civilian casualties. Remember what happened in Libya when we raised the issue of civilian casualties they simply said that it’s not relevant because “we’ve done such a fantastic thing toppling Kaddafi that it’s beneath our dignity to discuss civilian casualties”. Of course if there are civilian casualties it would be a very regrettable situation, we would not want this to happen but something needs to be done to change the dynamics. And we hope very much that our current participation will allow to change the political dynamics.
Q: Do you think that Russian airstrikes are helping to contain ISIL?
Churkin: This is our understanding. And there are others terrorist groups as well, probably except those four people who were trained by the US in the course of 12 months.
