Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks following talks with French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, Paris, July 6, 2017

Mr Le Drian,

Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to thank you my hosts for inviting me to hold these talks in Paris ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg. As Jean-Yves Le Drian said, our talks today followed in the spirit of our meeting in Moscow on June 20. The Moscow talks followed the meeting in Versailles on May 29, when President of Russia Vladimir Putin was in France at the invitation of President of France Emmanuel Macron.

Today we discussed the development of our relations following the Versailles summit. We pointed out that our trade has been growing following a long period of decline, and that it grew by nearly 25 per cent in the first quarter of 2017. We must do our best to maintain this positive trend. The Russian-French Economic, Financial, Industrial and Trade Council (CEFIC) will play a major role in this. We would also like to see other cooperation mechanisms, which were established some time ago, to be fully operational once again, including the Intergovernmental Commission co-chaired by the Russian and French prime ministers, the Large Interparliamentary Commission and the Security Cooperation Council of our foreign and defence ministers who meet in two-plus-two format.

I believe that we could make use of this format to achieve the goal that Mr Le Drian has mentioned, that is, to translate our dialogue into practical actions towards settling the problems that are facing the international community in the Middle East, North Africa and other regions. We are ready for this.

I fully share my French colleague’s description of international terrorism as the Number One foe. To defeat this enemy, we must put aside all the other international challenges. By defeating terrorism, we will also advance towards the settlement of many crises, including that in the Middle East as well as North Africa.

Regarding our counterterrorism cooperation, we are willing to promote it in the bilateral format, where we have accumulated considerable experience, and also at various multilateral platforms, primarily the UN.

We exchanged opinions and assessments of the situation in Syria. We discussed this issue at length and in detail too. As I have pointed out, our priority task is to include ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and the other terrorist organisations on the UN Security Council list. At the same time, we should work to settle humanitarian problems. It has become slightly easier to settle these problems, but the situation [in Syria] remains tense, though not as catastrophic as in for example Yemen. At the same time, we need to encourage the Syrians to agree on their future through an inclusive dialogue with all political, ethnic and confessional forces. This includes the adoption of a new constitution, UN-monitored elections and, of course, economic revival and normalisation of the situation in Syria, a key country in the Middle East.

We updated our French colleagues on the results of the international meeting on Syria, which ended in Astana yesterday. It was the fifth round. We exchanged opinions on the UN-led intra-Syrian talks under the guidance of UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. These talks between representatives of the Syrian government and the main opposition groups will resume in Geneva on July 10. 

We discussed the crisis in Ukraine. Both parties reaffirmed their support for the full implementation of the Minsk Package, including with due regard for the agreements, which were reached at the summit level between the Normandy format countries in Paris in 2015 and in Berlin in 2016. They are aimed at unlocking the dead-end situation over the implementation of this vital document, which was approved by the UN Security Council.

We support the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its chairmanship of the Contact Group, where representatives of the Kiev government and the opposition openly discuss their problems, as well as the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM), which we are ready to strengthen so that it would have full control over ceasefire, disengagement and storage of heavy weapons in the designated areas.

As Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, we also exchanged views on the implementation of the Trianon Dialogue initiative, which President Macron advanced at his meeting with President Putin in Versailles on May 29. This Franco-Russian civil society forum will create the framework for developing contacts between young people and NGOs and for the promotion of business exchanges, including between our SMEs. I think that we will formulate our proposals soon for discussion by our presidents.

I am grateful to our French hosts for their hospitality. Speaking on behalf of the Russian delegation and my own behalf, I want to reaffirm that we will be happy to welcome Mr Le Drian and our other French colleagues to Russia again.