New York – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused US President Joe Biden of hypocrisy for his plea for diplomacy and cooperation.
Before the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Lavrov accused the US of assuming the right to decide on the democratic status of other countries. The Washington initiative for a “democracy summit” is “clearly in the spirit of a Cold War, since it is calling for a new ideological crusade against all those who think differently,” Lavrov said. This contradicts Biden’s words that he does not want to see the world divided into two blocks.
Lavrov accused the West of using the UN for its own interests or of trying to push it aside. In the event of a conflict, a double standard is measured depending on the interests involved, and the right to self-determination is not granted to everyone. With the Western concept of «rule-based» countries should be with a different conception of order. So Germany and France would have announced an alliance for multilateralism, even though the ultimate forum for it already exists: the United Nations.
The 76th UN general debate in New York ends this Monday. After only described video speeches had been played back in 2020 due to the pandemic, this time again many heads of state and government traveled to New York, mostly with fewer delegations than before.
On the sidelines of the conference, Lavrov announced another round of arms control talks with the United States for the new week. “As for our talks with the US on strategic stability, the first round was in July and the second is scheduled to take place next week.” The two largest nuclear powers, the USA and Russia, began new talks on arms control in Geneva, Switzerland at the end of July, which Biden and the Russian head of state Vladimir Putin had agreed on.