Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iraq and Syria are natural allies in the fight against ISIS.
Lavrov spoke at the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq, in Paris on 15 September 2014.
The foreign minister warned that “aggressive actions by the terrorist organization” threaten the future of Iraq as well as neighboring Syria.
“The achievements of the “Islamic State” and many other terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere would have been impossible without financial and material support from outside, including supply of weapons and purchase of oil from fields controlled by terrorists. Shutting down all the channels of such support must become a matter of priority.”
Earlier, President Obama declared that he would bomb the forces of ISIS in Syria without Syrian participation, but Vladimir Putin has warned that any such unilateral action in Syria would be clearly seen as “an act of aggression”.
Meanwhile Syria has asked Washington to engage in military and intelligence collaboration to defeat their mutual enemy, inviting US congressmen and senators to visit Damascus to discuss joint action against the jihadis.
Lavrov urged countries in the counterterrorist coalition to “demonstrate genuine unity, not allowing disputes between them on other issues to hamper the efficiency of joint counter-terrorist efforts”.
“The extremists will try to make use of any differences in our positions to undermine the united front against them. A truly collective approach should be developed through putting our minds and potentials together. No one can pretend that he knows better than others what kind of strategy we’ll need to help the region. And of course, we must build our common action on a solid foundation of United Nations Charter and UN counter-terrorist instruments and mechanisms. We face the same enemies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, and there is no room for double standards,” Lavrov told the conference.
He said it made no sense to try and distinguish between “bad” and “good” terrorists and that such reckless policies had lead to terrible consequences in Libya and Mali.