Statement by Chargé d'Affaires of the Russian Federation Dmitry Polyanskiy at UNSC briefing on the situation in Iraq
Mr.President,
At the outset, let me welcome Mr. Fouad Hussein, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iraq, to this meeting and thank Special Representative Hennis-Plasschaert for her briefing.
It is with great concern that we watch the developments in the friendly Iraq, where a shelling killed 8 and injured more than 20 civilians in the northern province of Duhok on 20 July. We offer our sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured. We count on a thorough investigation of this incident. We have listened to and taken into account the position of the representative of Turkey on this matter.
We reaffirm our principled and consistent support for the stability and security of Iraq, and underscore that sovereignty and territorial integrity of this Arab state must be respected.
In this regard, we are concerned that attempts to drag the country into a regional confrontation, which undermine the efforts of authorities to facilitate Iraq’s recovery against the backdrop of large-scale challenges, including terrorist threat, may affect the domestic political situation in the country.
We proceed from the assumption that Iraq must not be turned into an arena for settling personal scores. By all means, there is no alternative to strengthening regional security, i.a. through establishing good neighborly relations among all interested states. In this context, we highly appreciate Baghdad’s commitment to promoting its relations with neighbors.
What is of essence now is making efforts to preclude a situation, which may escalate contradictions among states. We do hope that extra-regional stakeholders will facilitate normalization process rather that spread new confrontational scenarios.
Against this backdrop, we believe collective work dedicated to finding consensus-based mutually acceptable solutions is demanded as never before. Such efforts should aim at mitigating tension and settling all acute crises by political and diplomatic means on the basis of international law. The Russian collective security concept for the Persian Gulf is designed to search for such exact solutions, as it offers a step-by-step progression towards untangling conflicts, elaborating confidence and control measures, and ultimately, building an integral collective security and cooperation mechanism in the sub-region.
Thank you.
