New York: Russia has called for collective efforts to prevent a large-scale war in the Persian Gulf and got strong support from all United Nations Security Council members except the United States, which called Iran the major culprit and urged that it be held accountable for supporting terrorists and destabilising the region.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a high-level virtual council meeting that the worst case scenario was avoided earlier this year following the US killing of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, and warned that “the situation remains fragile and could become dangerous and unpredictable again.”
His country, which holds the council presidency this month, believes that “if we work together openly and impartially, and if we pool our political will and our creative potential, we will be able to help the states of the Persian Gulf overcome this difficult historic period and create an effective system of collective security,” he said.
Robert Malley, president of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, warned that “the region-wide conflict that now looms largest across the globe is a conflict nobody apparently wants — a conflict triggered by tensions in the Gulf region.”
“It is far from inevitable,” he said, but “a single attack by rocket, drone or limpet mine could set off a military escalation between the US and Iran and their respective regional allies and proxies that could prove impossible to contain.”
Read the articvle by Edith M. Lederer in The Sydney Morning Herald.