MOSCOW: Russia sees no sign that it will receive the guarantees that will allow it to resume a deal permitting Ukraine, one of the world’s main exporters, to ship grain through the Black Sea, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.
Russia quit the year-old deal in July, complaining in particular that Western sanctions were impeding its own exports of grain and fertilizers, in contravention of a memorandum signed in parallel with the Black Sea grain deal.
Lavrov said after a meeting with the foreign minister of Turkiye, which brokered the deal together with the United Nations, that Russia was ready to return to the deal “tomorrow” if its demands were met, but that there was no sign of this happening.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said: “Russia has demands for uninterrupted export of its own grain and fertilizer. We confirmed the importance of meeting these demands in our meeting.”
He added that, helped by Turkiye’s efforts and contributions, the United Nations had prepared a new proposal package: “We believe that this provides a suitable basis for the revival of the initiative.”
But Lavrov said: “There is still not a single guarantee in this message. There are only promises to try faster, try more actively...
“As soon as there are not promises, but guarantees, with a concrete result that can be implemented tomorrow, then from tomorrow the implementation of this package will resume in full.”
He said it was the West that stood in the way of a solution.
“The UN members themselves cannot do anything, they are forced to ask the West to be reasonable, to take a constructive approach; the West doesn’t want to do that.”
Moscow sees no sign of new guarantees on grain deal, Lavrov says
https://arab.news/janrx
Moscow sees no sign of new guarantees on grain deal, Lavrov says
- Lavrov said that Russia was ready to return to the deal “tomorrow” if its demands were met, but that there was no sign of this happening
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
