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Avoid force in settling disputes: Lavrov

ASTANA: Criticising Georgia’s use of force in South Ossetia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said here on Friday modern international problems can be resolved without the use of force.

Speaking at an international conference, “Common World: Peace Through Progress on Friday”, Mr. Lavrov said, “None of the modern international problems has solutions involving the use of force, as the role of force is objectively decreasing in the global and regional policy. This is one of the lessons from the recent crisis in the Caucasus that evidently proved that any stake on the use of force and on the denial of international obligations only creates problems, deadlocks and hampers a comprehensive settlement of different conflicts”.

“Taking into account the theme of our conference I would like to attract your attention to the vast damage inflicted to South Ossetia’s cultural heritage by the August 8 attacks,” he said. The Georgian army not only destroyed most apartment buildings, schools, a university but also its capital, Tskhinvali’s historical districts. “Thus, the fundamental international documents such as the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage were violated.”

Russia’s recognition of independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he insisted, was “equally dictated by legal, moral and pragmatic considerations, first of all in the interests of ensuring security and survival of these people as a part of civilization’s diversity of the Caucasian region”. “For this purpose we actively seek the development of measures that will guarantee the non-use of force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia in full compliance with the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan. We will further on protect the highest civilised values — the right to life and freedom, and to protection against ethnic discrimination. We will call against any attempts to sacrifice these values to the unipolar policy based on block thinking and double standards.

“The events in the Caucasus proved that moral factors have vital importance in the modern international policy. The current problems cannot be resolved without morals and human solidarity. The search for a common moral denominator that had always existed in major world religions is extremely important for building a dialogue among civilizations and defining the criteria of ensuring the rights and responsibilities of a person as well as the rights and responsibilities of a state,” he said.

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