Speech by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, and his answer to the question from the mass media after his visit to Saudi Arabia, Jeddah, 21 June 2014

There was a visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, the Heir of the Crown Prince, Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Saud Al Faisal, and the Minister of National Guard, King's son Mutaib, were my conversation partners here. All my conversation partners underlined the profound interest of the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the King personally, who has just returned from his vacation, in the significant build-up of a partnership with the Russian Federation. The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the King Abdullah agreed about this during their recent phone conversations and the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the KSA, Saud Al Faisal, to Russia at the beginning of June.

As the leaders of the two countries agreed, today they have conducted substantial negotiations on two blocks of issues. The first of these are bilateral ties in all their entirety. We agreed that our trade and economic cooperation needs a sufficient build up. We have all the possibilities for that, including from the point of view of searching for a mutually beneficial investment proposal in Russia and Saudi Arabia and the combination of our financial and technological potentials. We agreed to activate the activity of the joint intergovernmental commission for trade and economic, science and technical cooperation, which has not met for several years, and to promote cooperation within the framework of the Russian-Arab Business Council for business between the two countries I think that we can take practical steps in this direction in the near future. I repeat, consent has been reached in principle.. We have great interest in a range of areas for interaction – energy, cooperation in peace, exploration of outer space, peaceful use of nuclear energy, agriculture and infrastructure. We have already had experience of this and we have all the reasons to use it and move ahead with renewed vigour.

There is a big area of issues within the framework of our bilateral relations – humanitarian interaction. We agreed to activate exchanges within the ambit of archaeology. We have mutual interest to share our experiences and work together. There is mutual interest in tourism development. We thanked the authorities of Saudi Arabia for their constant and perfect attitude to our pilgrims in the Hajj season and supported the wish for Saudi Arabian subjects come to Russia as tourists more frequently. We have things to see. Such a proposition was supported.

A big area of issues related to various conflicts, which are multiplying in the region – in the Middle East and North Africa. Problems of Libya and Iraq were added to the situation in Syria, which has been the main focus of attention of the global community for a long time. Things are not going on as they should in Yemen as well. Without going into detail, I am able to report the main topicL we share the understanding with Saudi Arabia that the central problem now is terrorism and all the efforts should be used to prevent domination of terrorists in this region. Each of the countries, which I have mentioned, is subject to such a threat.

The second thing of principle importance is to avoid another wave of breakdowns in countries of the region. There are such risks. Moreover, they have aggravated recently because of actions by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. This does not correspond to the interests of Saudi Arabia, other countries of the region or Russian, because we are interested in a stable, flourishing Middle East, so that all people, representatives of all sects, including Christians and Orthodox, will live in peace. . We support a stable Middle East, which opens up additional opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation. This is the main conceptual match in our approaches with representatives of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

We also agreed on more specific issues and how we will proceed on these tasks – prevention of terrorism and the stabilisation of states in the region – during our consultations with each other and, of course, with other external players, including countries of the Persian Gulf, Egypt, the LAS, China and our western partners, primarily permanent members of the UN Security Council.

I will mention that non-Arab representatives and leaders of the Islamic world like Turkey and Iran must also be involved in such an interaction, if we wish to have results in these areas of regional policy.

We completed our visit with a visit of the OIC headquarters, a talk with the Secretary General and other leading employees of this Organisation, and confirmed our interest in further development of our interaction.

Russia is an observer in the OIC. We have a framework agreement, which envisages regular consultations on different problems of the Middle East and North Africa, tasks of fighting terrorism and preventing of funding of terrorism, cooperation in the area of dialogue between civilisations, religions, as well as the interaction between Russia and OIC member states in the UN in various sectors related to ensuring peace, security, promotion of equality, 'double standards' free human rights. Interest in all these areas has been confirmed in close consultations. We will work with our partners accordingly to reach these agreements.

Question: Since the entry into force of the peace plan by the Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, there have been several incidents in the Russian-Ukrainian border. Taking all these incidents into account, can we talk about positive prospects of peaceful settlement of the situation in the South-East of Ukraine within the set one week period? How do you assess the content of this peace plan and no item about the beginning of negotiations in it? How much is the proposition regarding the buffer zone is required and can it be implemented?

Sergey Lavrov: The Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have already announced their assessments of the peace plan, which was proposed by Petro Poroshenko yesterday. The majority of its items looks like an ultimatum, the idea of which is that all those, who do not agree with the current authorities and the way it came to power, have several days, a week, to lay down their weapons, otherwise, they must leave Ukraine, and then we would probably look if you have not committed any severe crimes, you can receive amnesty.

I repeat again. This plan contains a range of ultimatum requirements. This is not what the President Petro Poroshenko talked about in his meetings in Normandy, phone conversations with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the way the western conversation partners of our President presented the case in their recent phone conversations.

They are missing one important thing – negotiation. This is a radical departure from the Geneva Statement of the 17 April, which has been until now, at least verbally, supported by our western partners, the United States, the EU and the Ukrainian authorities. The Ukrainian authorities signed under this statement, which says clearly that apart from stopping any violence, any kinds of extremism, an inclusive dialogue should be started immediately; it should concern all the regions and political forces in the search for agreements on constitutional reform. There is a word that the process of constitutional reform be commenced through such a dialogue "immediately". There has been sufficient time since the 17 April, when it was adopted, to formulate new specific propositions by the new Ukrainian authorities regarding ways of organising such an immediate dialogue, the beginning of which was requested by participants of the Geneva Statement. This has not happened yet.

I repeat, we are concerned and warned that in parallel with the proposition of this peace plan the intensiveness of the military "counter-terrorism" operation has grown. To be noted, there was shooting in the direction of the Russian territory, there was damage. There are casualties. We do not know the fate of those who were wounded in mortar fire. But I believe that here everybody will look at the western sponsors of the Kiev authorities, who claimed responsibility for the coup and further preparations for the presidential elections. The main thing is now that this responsibility should be implemented through specific steps, which will return the situation to the Geneva Statement of the 17 April and will allow a dialogue to start on constitutional reform and settlement of the crisis with participation of each and all Ukrainian regions immediately.