PRESSTV- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has criticized the current security system in Europe calling for a more 'reliable' and 'collective' one.
Lavrov told the UN General Assembly Saturday that the existing structure of the security system in Europe "did not pass the strength test in recent events."
He proposed that a 'pan-European summit' be convened to take "a comprehensive look at security problems."
The summit would be tasked with reviewing a proposal submitted by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin last June to develop "a treaty on European Security, a kind of 'Helsinki-2'," The Russian foreign minister said.
The Helsinki Final Act was a declaration agreed to by 35 states in an attempt to improve the relations between the Soviet Union and the West. It was signed on August 1, 1975 in Helsinki, Finland.
Medvedev proposed a new security arrangement in Berlin early in June, adding that such an arrangement should be based on 'pure' national interests, not distorted by ideological motives.
He further criticized NATO plans for an eastward expansion--an open breach of a NATO promise made to the last Soviet Union Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev upon the union's 1991 dismemberment--and said new security treaties should replace Cold War-era ones.
Lavrov also said that the proposed treaty aimed to "create a reliable collective system that would ensure equal security for all states," AFP reported.
"It is a process involving all participants who would reaffirm their commitment to fundamental principles of international law, such as the non-use of force and peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs, and the inadmissibility of strengthening one's own security by infringing upon the security of others," he concluded.
MMN/HAR -PRESSTV