VIENNA, January 31. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's message to his Austrian counterpart, Alexander Schallenberg, laying bare Russia's approaches to the European security architecture, has been handed over to the Austrian foreign ministry, Russian Ambassador to Austria Dmitry Lyubinsky said on Monday.
"During a personal meeting, we handed over to the colleagues in the Austrian foreign ministry Sergey Lavrov's message to Alexander Schallenberg, which informs about our principled approaches to the fundamental principle of equal and indivisible security, which is of paramount importance for the entire European architecture of security," he said. "We are waiting for a quick response from our Austrian partners and their answer to the question of how they interpret the commitment not to strengthen one's security at the expense of the security of other countries on the basis of the principle of indivisible security committed to paper in the documents of the OSCE summits in Istanbul in November 1999 and in Astana in December 2010."
In his interview with radio stations on January 28, Lavrov said that Russian planned to send inquiries to the Western nations about the implementation of their commitments within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The Russian side hopes "for the continuation of meaningful dialogue in the near future," the Russian ambassador added.
The Russian foreign minister recalled on January 26 that two OSCE official documents, the Charter for European Security, adopted in Istanbul in 1999, and the Astana Declaration, adopted at an OSCE summit in 2010, have two provisions on security. The first one says that each country has the right to choose and change its unions to ensure its security, and the second one envisages that neither of the countries has the right to strengthen its security to the prejudice of the security of others.
According to Lavrov, Moscow 'has lost any hope of receiving any clear response." However, in his words, he planned to issue official messages to the foreign ministers of all the countries that put their signatures under those documents asking to clarify their approaches to these matters.
