Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Remarks to the press by Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, following the UN Security Council meeting on situation in Middle East

July 12, 2016


Full transcript:

Q: Do you think it is a time for an arms embargo (in South Sudan)?

V.Churkin: Well, we need to consider the situation comprehensively and the arms embargo is not a magic wand, recipe for averting the worst. We need to give some serious thought about what can be done.

Q: Secretary-General of the UN Ban Ki-moon was quite strong yesterday demanding arms embargo…

V.Churkin: It is his position.

Q: Are you completely opposed to it?

V.Churkin: No, we are not completely opposed. As I say, it is definitely a very difficult situation. Together with other members of the Security Council we are thinking about what can be done.

Q: Do you think sanctions work as a mechanism? Sanctions on leaders?

V.Churkin: They never worked and just make things worse. I would not encourage to go down that alley.

Q: And DPRK, what happening there? Are there any discussions? As Samantha Power suggested she wanted to add some names…

V.Churkin: No, nothing. Not that we are aware of.

Q: And what about the Iran report?

V.Churkin: We are going to criticize the report.

Q: What don’t you like about it?

V.Churkin: Listen to my statement on July 18.

Q: What about the Yemen process? How do you stand? Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi said he is not going back. He said the he houthis cannot be a part of the future government.

V.Churkin: No, I have to look it up because it sounds highly unlikely that he would have said that because they are a large part of the population and they have been a part of this process for so long and they have caused a lot of trouble which triggered the whole situation so I don't know how an agreement can be reached without their participation. I said even in my statement today in the Security Council that we hope the talks will resume in Kuwait on July 15 as they agreed.

Q: Another question on South Sudan: do you think more troops should be sent to boost the peacekeeping mission?

V.Churkin: I think it’s quite likely. If there are those who are prepared to send more troops then, you know, something needs to be done in order to try to stabilize the situation and to protect the population which is  of course is on the receiving end of this whole disaster but then I don’t know what kind of influence, here I suppose we should be looking more, once again, towards regional players who can actually impress upon the two rivalling factions or rivalling leaders, competing leaders, that this is a very bad way to go for their country and for the entire population.

Q: And just a comment on the South China Sea decision this morning?

V.Churkin: I’m not going to comment on that.

Q: What do you think of the Quartet report, is it really fair?

V.Churkin: Yeah, you know, we have been working very hard on the report. I know there is some dissatisfaction about the content of the report but I think it’s important that the report is out there and the Quartet was able to give some recommendations to the parties and no matter what the dissatisfaction might be, I hope the parties to look very carefully at those recommendations.

Q: But it puts so much blame on the victims?

V.Churkin: Well it points out something which it was felt by the Quartet needed to be pointed out. And of course we all hope that the conflict is going to be settled and the only way to settle the conflict is to engage in the talks and the members of the Quartet believe that. It was important to convey those recommendations to the parties. So now let’s see if they take those recommendations into account, no matter what kind of displeasure they might express. The report does not fully reflect the national position of the Russian Federation about the way forward and about the outcome, so compromises obviously were needed, but the fact that after a long period of time, and you recall, we were not able to convene any ministerial meetings of the Quartet for two years at a certain point because of difficulties of one of the members of the Quartet. Now, not only the officials are meeting regularly, there was a ministerial meeting, there were certain instructions given to the members, to the officials, to prepare the report. It was very hard work but the report is out there. In a situation where we don’t have too many pillars to build on in order to move the process forward, I would not dismiss the report. Of course, anybody can criticize what they want but I would urge people and countries and players to look at it very seriously.

Q: Does Russia support the French Initiative, fully?

V.Churkin: To have a conference? You know, we participated in the meeting in Paris, if it were to have additional, some added value that’s fine. As we look at things, we do have some concerns that the Israelis are very skeptical, the Palestinians are more inclined, but if they can meet in the conference, let’s see. When we went to Paris, it was not something particularly earth shattering. Actually, we are quite encouraged by the current Egyptian efforts in this area. Egypt has its own positive story to tell about making peace with Israel so we hope that the current initiative of President Sisi can have a positive effect and we support the activity and the work of Foreign Minister Shoukry in this regard.

Q: On Syria, the UN has expressed concern about the fact that the main road has been cut off?

V.Churkin: The fact is that the road has been very actively and heavily used to supply various terrorist groups. When you have military convoys of about 60 military vehicles, convoys carrying nothing but weapons to very bad guys around Aleppo, what are you supposed to do? So, the situation cannot be presented as unfortunately my colleague Samantha Power tried to do today that the only thing the government with the support of the Russians is doing is creating difficulties for the humanitarian effort. This is not the case at all. The fact is that Jabat Al-Nusrah is extremely active in the area, in the area of Aleppo, and unfortunately the supply of weapons and military material to the terrorists is continuing. So, in that kind of a situation - clearly the government has to fight back and we are there to help them in this regard.

Q: And it’s becoming more and more apparent that this August 1 deadline is not going to be met?

V.Churkin: Well, I wouldn’t call it a deadline, it was a target. A deadline is something after which things are supposed to go dead. We hope it’s not going to happen this time and we do hope that Staffan de Mistura is going to convene those talks before too long.

Q: Are the Russia-US negotiations moving any closer?

V.Churkin: Well, they are talking all the time. As you know, Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry talk on the phone almost daily and Mr. Kerry is going to Moscow on the 14th and 15th of July. Obviously, the situation in Syria and the international efforts are going to be an important part of those discussions. We do happen to be the co-chairs of the ISSG but what we have been saying repeatedly and consistently is that we cannot settle it for them. Russia and the US cannot simply, you know, put some language on the table and give it to the parties and tell them to do it. That must be negotiated between the parties and unfortunately we see that there has been a long break between the rounds of talks. The third round was several months ago. We think, this break is too long. Of course, a large part of it is that this Riyadh Group or High Negotiating Committee (as they call themselves), have never shown that they were about negotiations, because the only thing they kept saying was that they wanted to see President Assad go, and that is simply not enough for the talks to start and to be conducted in some meaningful way. Of course, Staffan de Mistura cannot force them to produce a meaningful position, but we believe that some others can. We believe that Riyadh has a role to play, Turkey has a role to play, and most definitely the US must make more of an effort for them to come up with a meaningful and intelligible negotiating position. So this is what we are hoping will happen.

Q: On the Secretary-General election, should the next Secretary-General be from Eastern Europe?

V.Churkin: We believe that they have a preference, yes.

Q: And a woman?

V.Churkin: We believe that there is a strong interest among Member States and there are some very interesting women in the group and so I think they (women) have a strong chance.