Interfax: Russia ready to cooperate with West in tackling terror, regional conflicts – Sergei Ivanov

(Interfax – May 2, 2015)

Russia will still cooperate with the United States and Europe in fighting terrorism, resolving regional conflicts and countering other modern challenges, if partners are keen on that, says Sergei Ivanov, the chief of the Russian presidential administration.

“New threats and challenges emerged, for example, terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts. Russia is actively involved in solving all these problems, and we cooperate with U.S., Western Europe,” Ivanov said in an interview with the RT television.

“We will never change our principled approach towards solving these problems: we will further work together with our foreign partners, if they, of course, are still interested in that,” Ivanov said.

An example of efficient cooperation is the framework agreement over Iran’s nuclear problem, which was reached in Lausanne in early April, he said.

“This is a serious breakthrough,” he said.

At the same time, a lack of coordination of tackling such problems leads to frustrating consequences, Ivanov said.

“Let us see what happened in the Middle East, in Libya, for example. The United Nations did not make any resolution that would address the bombing of this country. And what we are seeing now are hypocritical attempts to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Libya who are trying to reach Italy, for example,” the Kremlin official said.

On this issue, the European countries “are facing the results of their own policy,” he said.

“Of course, it is a terrible human tragedy: hundreds of people died. But the main cause of such illegal immigration is the bombings of Libya and the killing of Gaddafi. Under Gaddafi, there was no illegal immigration,” Ivanov said.

[featured image is file photo]