Lavrov: US preventing establishment of Palestinian state

The United States is doing everything it can to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

He added that full normalisation in the Middle East could not be achieved without resolving the main issue, which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on United Nations resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.

Lavrov said that the Palestinians have been waiting to have their own state for over 70 years, but the Americans have monopolised the mediation process and are doing everything they can to prevent its creation.

He went on to call on all responsible countries to unify their efforts in order to create the conditions for the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

“What exposes the selfishness of the Western minority are intrusive attempts to ‘Ukranize’ the agenda of international discussions and push a number of unresolved regional crises into the background, many of which have dragged on for years and even decades,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Read: Moscow accuses US of ‘stagnating’ Palestine-Israel peace process