Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement at a joint news conference following talks with Ayman Safadi, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Amman, November 3, 2022

Thank you, my dear friend Ayman,

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our Jordanian friends, and personally to His Majesty King Abdullah II, for the great hospitality accorded to my delegation.

Productive talks were held with my Jordanian counterpart and friend Ayman Safadi. Following a good tradition, we conducted our talks in a trust-based and constructive tone. They were very useful and timely.

After this event, we are scheduled to have an audience with His Majesty King Abdullah II. I would like to forward to his Majesty special wishes and assessments of some global events from President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

We discussed in detail the key areas of bilateral cooperation between Russia and Jordan. We agreed to actively promote the implementation of the decisions made at the February 2022 meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation. We were positive about the prospects for interaction in agriculture, transport infrastructure and peaceful uses of nuclear energy for the production of isotopes for medical purposes. We also continue our cooperation in education. Today, about 1,500 Jordanian students study in Russia. We are willing to increase the number of grants for the Kingdom each year at the expense of the Russian budget.

During the exchange of views on international and regional issues, we focused on Syria, notably, the need to carry out UN Security Council Resolution 2254. We confirmed our common position in support of the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the SAR, and the lawful right of the Syrians to determine their future independently with due account for the interests of all groups of the population. We emphasised the importance of pooling international efforts for resolving the said problems and implementing the UN Security Council resolution. We noted the significance of multilateral formats, including the Astana format in which Jordan participates as an observer. We appreciate and welcome the striving of our Jordanian friends to promote the settlement in Syria via the Arab League. We noted the need to step up international assistance to Damascus to alleviate the humanitarian situation and to implement the early recovery projects under the UN Security Council resolution adopted in July of this year. So far, international donors are paying little attention to this.

We were informed about the summit of the League of Arab States that ended on November 2 in Algeria and the decisions adopted there. We welcome these decisions. Our positions are identical or similar on the majority of issues mentioned in the Arab League summit declaration.

This primarily concerns the Middle East peace process. At the talks, we reaffirmed the commitment of Moscow and Amman to the universally recognised international legal framework for the Middle East settlement – the resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, as well as the Arab Peace Initiative.

We highly appreciate the role of His Majesty King Abdullah II in ensuring the rights of the representatives of all religions in Jerusalem. We emphasised the importance of intensifying the efforts of the international community towards settling the Arab-Israeli conflict. For our part, we stressed the counterproductive character of US attempts to subvert the efforts of the Quartet of international mediators. This unique legitimate diplomatic tool for the Middle East peace process, which has been approved by the UN Security Council, sits idle due to the US’s position and is not implementing the tasks it was charged with.

We talked about the situation in Iraq. We confirmed the importance of comprehensive national dialogue to reach broad intra-Iraqi accord on the main issues on the internal political agenda against the backdrop of persisting challenges and threats. We welcome the endorsement of the new government by the Iraqi parliament. We hope the Cabinet of Ministers headed by Mohammed Shia al-Sudani will make the necessary efforts to improve the situation in the country, including ensuring security, law and order, and settle outstanding issues in relations between Baghdad and the Kurdistan autonomous region.

We informed our Jordanian friends about the recent events regarding Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. We confirmed our intention to protect the population of Donbass, about which President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke in detail in his recent statements, and to prevent the discrimination of citizens that want to maintain their ties with Russian culture, language and education.

We described the real state of affairs against the background of the appeals to the Russian Federation to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis. We recalled the Kiev regime’s persistent steps since last April and up to this day, to block any opportunity to continue or resume the negotiating process.

As for the grain deal, we are content that at Türkiye’s initiative, the Ukrainian leadership signed guarantees on its commitment not to repeat its attempts to use the humanitarian routes in the Black Sea for military purposes. The implementation of the Ukrainian part of the agreement has been resumed, but at the same time, we do not see the results regarding the second part of the deal that was initially suggested by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Let me recall that it includes the removal of any obstacles in the way of Russian fertiliser and grain exports. We again urged the UN Secretary-General to fulfil the commitments that he has assumed at his own initiative. Today, I gave a detailed account of this to Mr Minister and his colleagues.

I hope the countries that continue to put up obstacles to Russian shipments of fertiliser and grain will realise their responsibility as supporters of the Guterres-proposed package agreement. The agreement consists of two parts – Russian and Ukrainian. Serious measures must be taken soon as regards the second part of this package. Importantly, the amounts of fertiliser and grain in the Russian part of the deal are incomparably larger than in the Ukrainian part.

I believe we had a good conversation. Using this opportunity, I invited Ayman Safadi to visit the Russian Federation again at his convenience.