Your Excellency Mr. Sergey Lavrov
Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation,
Distinguished Members of the Delegation,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me first welcome Your Excellency and your distinguished delegation to Eritrea. We are indeed honoured by this timely visit which has afforded us the opportunity to exchange views on international and regional issues of great importance, and, to further strengthen our bilateral ties.
Your Excellency,
These are turbulent times. The specter of unnecessary, avoidable and spiraling calamity is looming larger than at any time in the recent past. In the event, the significance of Your Excellency’s visit must be gauged against the backdrop of these unfolding and extremely preoccupying trends and realities.
Peoples throughout the world are anxiously following – hour by hour and 24 hours a day – the underlying causes of an impending upheaval that poses a grave threat to global peace and stability.
To fully comprehend the prevailing climate and the dangerous phase we are passing through, it is imperative to examine past history. This is indeed critical and indispensable in order to draw and glean appropriate lessons for what may transpire in the period ahead.
At a time of unparalleled technological progress, the thrust of our collective aspirations and concerted action ought to be geared towards the cultivation and consolidation of a global system that serves humanity as a whole. In terms of cogent ethical considerations and standards, this should not have been the epoch for reverting to regressive policies of war and turmoil.
Unfortunately, “the few of the few” – which are currently plunging humanity into avoidable catastrophe – are the minuscule proponents of greed and domination that have inculcated turmoil, immense human suffering and pillage for centuries. Instead of atonement and reparations for wrongs of the past, they have opted to dwell on policies of chaos and turmoil.
In the US, the horrendous crimes of extermination committed against indigenous native Americans in order to expropriate their land and resources may seem as forgotten now due to the passage of time. The tribulations of African slaves who were catapulted to the “new land” for manual agricultural labour that the “few of the few” had usurped was an extension of their crimes of ethnic cleansing. Asian indentured labourers who were brought in for the construction of extensive railway lines at the time of industrialization was another ugly feature of this inexcusable policy. The repugnant history of European colonization falls in the same category. (In this perspective, the George Floyd case and the abuse and killings of indigenous children in Canada are not exceptions but integral part of historical crimes).
The miniscule hegemonists had no qualms to even use atomic bombs during the Second World War. Furthermore, the multiple wars of aggression they unleashed in Asia, Africa and Latin America after the Second World War in pursuit of, and to achieve, their perceived “strategic interests” are contemporaneous realities that are fresh in our collective minds. The creation of “Al-Qaeda” towards the end of the Cold War as a Trojan Horse is also an open secret and vivid demonstration of the extent of their malice.
As we all know, the former Soviet Union collapsed both due to their relentless hostility as well as misguided acts of Soviet Leaders. This was seen as a golden opportunity to recklessly establish what they termed as a “new and monopolistic international order”. The overarching theme underpinning this uni-polar world order was predicated, in their view, on “preventing the emergence of any competitive power”. But in spite of all their efforts, this objective has floundered with time.
The “containment policy” that they charted out within the framework of a uni-polar world order was not distinct, in any real sense, from a declaration of war. The Russian Federation was one of the primary super-powers targeted in this reckless policy of containment. Failure of this misguided policy in the past thirty years, and the crystallization of developments that they did not anticipate, has now gravitated them to put China at the highest rung of their elusive containment policy.
Against this backdrop, the crisis that has unfolded in Ukraine is, in essence, a byproduct of the reckless policy of hegemony and containment that they have pursued in the past decades. The sad fact is that Ukraine is both a pretext and victim of this policy.
In view of these indelible historical facts, what is the trajectory that our global community is heading to? How can one justify the singular pursuit and escalation of war while closing all doors for peace and justice irrespective of grave consequences to humanity? These are crucial and timely issues of paramount importance.
In the event, the peoples of the world have no choice but to vigorously combat fruitless attempts to resuscitate the defunct uni-polar world order of dominance and imperial hubris for the prevalence of a new dispensation of justice, stability and prosperity. In the circumstances, the consolidation of their alliances and struggles is not an option but a necessity.
Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea