Russia against the transformation of the UN Security Council into an investigative procedure mechanism on the problem of Syria

Moscow opposes attempts to turn the UN Security Council into an investigative and procedural mechanism on the problem of Syria, said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"The co -authors (the project of resolutions on Syria - the USA, Great Britain and France) are trying not only to support the commission (in the investigation of the murder of ex -Prime Minister Lebanon Rafika Hariri), but also to be implemented in the sphere of its competence, and the UN Security Council is not the investigative authority," Lavrov told reporters in New York on Sunday.

According to Lavrov, "it would be wrong to mix criminal procedural mechanisms with interstate relations." The Russian Foreign Minister emphasized that in the draft resolution issued for discussion at the UN Security Council on October 31 of the United States, Great Britain and France, "such an attempt is being made."

He said that he had outlined this position of Russia at a meeting on Sunday on Sunday with the Foreign Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UN Security Council, including permanent members of the Security Council. "We conveyed specific considerations about how to overcome these contradictions in the text (draft resolution). The co -authors took a pause for thinking and studying our proposal until tomorrow morning," the minister said.

In this regard, Lavrov said: "Let's see what a reaction will be, but in any case it will be decided directly at a meeting of the UN Security Council at the level of ministers."

The diplomat emphasized that work on the draft resolution on an intermediate report to investigate the murder of Hariri continues.

"The report, as I said, is intermediate. It denotes some versions, the most likely of Syrian is considered, since the commission has reason to believe that individual officials of the Syrian leadership, primarily in the special services, could not be uninvenited for the organization of this murder," he said.

The minister noted that these conclusions are preliminary. "The main thing is now being discussed is the problem that the commission has encountered in regarding meetings with Syrian representatives, whom she would like to interview."

The Russian Foreign Minister said that the UN commission "expressed specific wishes that such meetings with Syrian representatives should be held without witnesses, in the place where the commission considers it necessary to do."

"We believe that, given the seriousness of this investigation, these requests of the commission must be satisfied," Lavrov said.

According to him, "in the draft resolution of the UN Security Council, the relevant provisions are agreed, which indicate the need for Syria to fulfill these conditions."

The Russian side supports "everything related to supporting the work of the commission on the basis of its mandate, and its mandate consists in investigating the circumstances of the murder of ex-Prime Minister Lebanon and assisting the Lebanese justice in organizing the subsequent trial," the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, adding that the relevant provisions are also agreed upon in the draft resolution.