Master class by Sergey Lavrov
The role of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the entire diplomatic department increases dramatically during the period of aggravation of the international situation and the escalation of the relapses of the Cold War. Today we are going through such times.The last year has passed under the sign of heightening tension in the world, the cause was the intra-Ukrainian crisis. Especially zealous in this regard are the enemies of Russia in the United States, which passion, as I want to create hotbeds of military-political tensions on the borders of our country, to harass their geopolitical rival, to constrain his forces and to give food for his constant propaganda harassment.
Pumping military psychosis is dangerous for international peace. At such moments, the importance of diplomacy, the symbol of which are the palm branches of the world, increases critically. What a success for Russia is that now such a brilliant professional as Sergey Lavrov is at the head of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is not surprising that in terms of the length of his tenure in this post he is inferior to Andrei Gromyko alone. In the current composition of the Russian government, he is also an “elder”. There are no signs of improvisation in his career. He is a diplomat by education - he graduated from MGIMO, and devoted his whole life to serving the Fatherland in his specialty. Almost 20 years worked in the United States in our office at the UN, of which 10 years was the head of the office. This experience is rarely anyone can boast. He knows all the intricacies of world politics, is familiar with the majority of the heads of state and his colleagues, is fluent in the main languages of international communication.
He has just returned from a trip to Central America and the Caribbean region. This region of the world is notorious for the fact that, for almost two centuries, the states located there were victims of the most brutal and cynical interventions by the United States, which arbitrarily put bloody dictators in power. Bitter irony is full of the novel by O. Henry "Kings and Cabbage", which tells about the constant US intervention in the affairs of the small Central American states. The keynote of the behavior of Americans, when they didn’t like something in this region, was the writer's phrase that one day a silent warship appeared in the waters of these countries and said to them: do not break toys!
When other states reproached the United States for imposing criminal executioners there in power, even such a “democratic” US president as Franklin Roosevelt spoke of the Nicaraguan dictator Somose: “Maybe he is a son of a bitch, but this is our son of a bitch a son". And now, in the formerly reserved fields of Washington, the distinguished guests from Russia began to come more and more often. S. Lavrov visited here for the first time in February 2010, now he had to develop the first successes.
The trip began with Cuba. Three times in the last 15 years, the presidents of Russia have been there, and Raul Castro came to Moscow twice.
Despite the difficulties that have arisen from time to time in relations between our countries, starting with the rocket crisis in 1962 and ending with the withdrawal of Russian electronic intelligence station forty years later from Cuba, the friendship between our peoples has never been interrupted.
Havana has consistently and steadily adhered to the course of strengthening comprehensive relations with Moscow. She never supported any anti-Russian resolutions that were put to the vote at the UN, and our country also insistently demanded a complete lifting of the criminal American blockade of Liberty Island.
In Cuba, 9 May is a holiday. As a rule, on this day, solemn events are held on the parade ground near the memorial, where Soviet soldiers-internationalists are buried, who gave their lives in the performance of their duty in Cuba. On this day, our fellow citizens who live there for various reasons come to Havana from many countries in the Caribbean. Numerous guests are held in the parade ranks of the units representing all branches of the armed forces of the country, the fireworks roar, the Cuban leadership is always represented at a high level. In 2005, when I happened to take part in such a celebration on the occasion of the 60 anniversary of the Great Victory, there was Raul Castro.
In connection with the celebration of the current anniversary of Victory in Havana, a conference on the theme “Interaction between the USSR and Latin America during the Second World War” is planned. Cuba will necessarily be represented in Moscow on Victory Day, its volunteers took part in battles against the German fascist troops on the Soviet-German front. I also hope that by the Victory Day a book written by me in the series “The Life of Remarkable People” about Raul Castro, a friend of our country, will go on sale.
S. Lavrov met with both R. Castro and Deputy Prime Minister R. Cabrises, who oversees trade and economic ties between Russia and Cuba, and with his colleague B. Rodriguez. During the conversations, support was expressed for the process of normalizing Cuban-American relations that had begun, and the interlocutors unequivocally condemned attempts by the Venezuelan opposition to disrupt the normal democratic course of the country's development. The next meeting of the Russian-Cuban intergovernmental commission, which will consider specific issues of bilateral cooperation, is scheduled for April 22 in Kazan. I would like this level of mutual understanding between our countries to be preserved forever.
From Havana, S. Lavrov’s route lay to Colombia, a country that the US deeply humiliated and robbed in 1903, when they отт chop off «a large piece of its territory from it and created the puppet state of Panama there.
An agreement was signed with the authorities of the new “republic” at lightning speed to grant the right to monopolistic construction of the canal to the United States under bonded conditions. For a century, the United States has been masters of the main interoceanic route connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. And this route, the Isthmus of Panama, was a Colombian department, forcibly torn away from historical homeland. There is no method against scrap, but the historical memory of the Colombian people preserves the facts of Washington's use of the “big baton policy”.
This year marks 80 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries, but previously these relations did not receive a deep development. Perhaps one of the reasons was the difficult domestic situation in Colombia: in the country, for many decades, a civil war raged between rebel left-wing groups and government forces. Now, under President Juan Manuel Santos, the situation has changed significantly. Representatives of the authorities and the rebels are negotiating in Havana to work out conditions for the restoration of lasting peace in Colombia.
Another circumstance that hampered the development of relations was the notoriety of the Colombian drug cartels, especially the so-called “Medellín grouping” led by Pablo Escobar. This gangster, who owned 50 capital of billions of dollars, held the whole country in fear for almost a quarter of a century, they said about him that he “pave the cocaine path to the presidential chair”. He himself was guided by the principle of “Plata o Plomo” - “Money or bullet”, either bribing or murder. The fight against the drug lord ended only in 1993 year: he was killed after he discovered his location by calling on a mobile phone. His son recalled that when his father was forced to hide with his family in one of the high-altitude shelters, he kept a fire in the fire all night, burning dollar bills. Heating cost him 2 million dollars.
At the same time, the best representatives of the Colombian intellectual elite loved our country and were drawn to it. I happened to meet in Moscow and accompany Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez during his entire trip to the USSR. He was fascinated by the works of Mikhail Bulgakov, about whom he knew nothing before coming to the USSR, and was struck by the similarity of their literary discoveries. An informal meeting with Soviet “dissidents” at the dacha of one of our poets was organized, at his request, which ended with a bohemian feast and jumping through a “cleansing” bonfire. Each participant wanted to get an autograph of a famous writer, and he signed a black marker on the bare backs of his drinking buddies. In Bogota, 70 has existed for years of the Leo Tolstoy Institute of Culture, which has spread knowledge about our country among Colombians. With him are Russian language courses.
Colombia is now a country with almost 50-million population, a booming economy, annual GDP growth is close to 5 percent, it is fully supplied with energy resources. It’s an excellent trading partner for Russia and, although the trade turnover between our countries is still small, 235 totals million dollars a year, but the prospects are very good. Connoisseurs know that Colombian coffee is considered the best in the world. And the most "Colombian" souvenir is a silver orchid flower, in the core of which a small emerald stone is inserted, because 90 percent of the total world volume of emeralds is mined in the country.
Colombia did not join the anti-Russian resolutions that were voted in the UN, so S. Lavrov’s meetings with President José Manuel Santos and Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin were held in a warm business environment.
Both sides appreciated the results of the negotiations. Russia provided Colombian citizens 53 with state scholarships to study at Russian universities. Good start!
From Bogota, our foreign minister arrived in Nicaragua, a country he himself called "our close friend and ally." Last year, Vladimir Putin visited there, and in February of this year’s world press commented on the visit there of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. This country, due to its geographical location, unfortunately for almost 200 years has been a victim of persistent US violence.
Having discovered California gold in 1848, the Americans discovered that the shortest and cheapest way from New Orleans to San Francisco goes through Nicaragua, where the river and lake systems almost touch the coast of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Thousands of adventurers flowed through Nicaragua, and in Washington they were thinking about capturing this country. In the middle of the XIX century, the country was conquered by American adventurers led by William Walker, they took advantage of the internal political divisions in Nicaragua, which grew into a civil war. For several years, gangsters who restored slavery in the country and even planned to subjugate all the nearby Central American states were outraged. They wrote on their banner “Five or none” - “Five or none.” That is, either we will capture all five states of Central America, or none. The common sense of the citizens of these countries judged in their own way: they united and defeated the alien gangsters. William Walker, who called himself the president of Nicaragua, was captured and shot in 1860 in Honduras.
In the early twentieth century, the United States again invaded Nicaragua under the pretext of ensuring the security of the Panama Canal under construction and preventing the construction of an alternative inter-oceanic channel by other powers on the territory of Nicaragua, then Japan was competing. The occupation lasted until the early thirties. The Americans had to get out under the pressure of the powerful national liberation movement, which was headed by Augusto Sandino. But, as they left, the Yankees left their puppet in power, the dictator Anastasio Somoza, who treacherously killed the great patriot and filled it with the blood of Nicaragua. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, which is now in power in Nicaragua, did away with the dictatorship of Somoza and, for obvious reasons, tries to stay away from the clutches of Washington.
The USSR and Russia have always sympathized with and helped Nicaragua, especially when the Sandinistas were in power there, it was in the period from 1979 to 1990 year, and then from 2006 year to the present day.
The army of Nicaragua is armed mainly weapons our production. Over the past two years, Russia has donated 225 thousand tons of wheat, 200 tractors and 10 combine harvesters to this poor country torn by earthquakes and disruptive US actions.
In Nicaragua, more than anywhere else, active volcanoes, tourists can look into the vents of some of them, where at the bottom of the crater forever boiling magma is visible. There is evidence that during the dictatorship of Somoza, political opponents of the regime were dropped from helicopters directly into the hellish maw of volcanoes. Where volcanoes, there and earthquakes, they repeatedly destroyed the capital of the country, Managua. Russia donated to Nicaragua a mobile diagnostic device “Struna-2”, which allows to predict the impact of the elements, as well as determine the seismic resistance of buildings. Our country has long been engaged in providing direct assistance in demining the fields left after the fight against the contras in the eighties.
Meetings and negotiations of S. Lavrov with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Foreign Minister Samuel Santos Lopez covered a wide range of international and regional problems, they were held in the spirit of deep mutual understanding. Western, primarily American media, immediately began to shout that the subject of discussion was the supply of Russian MiG-29 fighters to Nicaragua. The US press often gets hysterical when commenting on events in Latin America. I remember how in 1983, when the construction of an airfield for receiving charter planes with tourists was conducted on the island of Grenada, American journalists convinced everyone and everything that it was about aviation base for Soviet bombers aimed at Washington. Which became the pretext for the ruthless intervention of the US armed forces against the defenseless tiny Grenada.
The final destination of S. Lavrov’s trip was Guatemala. This country could possibly become the vanguard of the democratic reorganization of the entire Central American region. In 1945, patriotic forces won elections there, and the construction of a democratic, legal state in all respects continued for nine years. Until then, it did not encroach on the huge latifundia, which belonged to the American United Fruit Company. An attempt to nationalize part of its uncultivated land led to the US forming an army of mercenaries in neighboring Honduras, which in June 1954 invaded Guatemala, overthrew the legitimate government and established a dictatorship that covered the country with blood. For nearly half a century, the dominance of pro-American dictators in Guatemala killed more than 250 thousands of people. Some of them laid their heads in the dungeons, others found death in the incessant civil war.
I would like to recommend to everyone who, in one way or another, is influenced by the American propaganda machine - and its power is really crushing for naive people - or the US slander, who also have a lot in the world, take an interest in the history of Central American countries.
All crimes against humanity were committed there under the pretext of "defending democracy".
Guatemala was the center of the Mayan civilization, all the main monuments of the tribe are located in this country and on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula. The Spanish conquerors who considered themselves “enlightened” destroyed all the written evidence of the Mayan culture, from which only three lists survived, over which the experts of all states had unsuccessfully fought over the centuries. The solution was found by our single Leningrad scholar, Yuri Knorozov, a kind of weird “Jacques Paganel”, who was not appreciated by either the Soviet or the current Russian authorities. For his discovery, he was awarded the Grand Gold Medal of the President of Guatemala, the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle. He died in the 1999 year of pulmonary edema: he had a cold in a draft in the corridor of the St. Petersburg hospital where his bed was. This Russian "Lefty", received world fame.
In Guatemala, in October 2012, the Maya Y. Knorozov Center for the Study of the History and Culture of Maya was opened, and an atlas of Mayan cultural monuments is being created there. In Yucatan, in the Mexican tourist center, the city of Cancun, a monument to Y. Knorozov is erected. There is no prophet in his native homeland ...
An amazing thing: in the distant Guatemala, the Orthodox monastery of the Life-Giving Trinity operates, the “Lavra of Mambre”, which is led by mother Ines Ayau. In 2010, she was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship for the ascetic work of spreading Orthodoxy and the Russian language. S. Lavrov visited the monastery and presented it to the Mother Superior with the icon of St. George.
The meetings and conversations of S. Lavrov with President Otto Perez Molina and Foreign Minister Carlos Morales were very rich. Here - and the need to expand the volume of trade, which is at a modest level, total 74 million dollars a year, and a set of activities to expand cooperation under the Emergencies Ministry, and the provision of Russian state scholarships for Guatemalan students, more than fifty were allocated, and cooperation between cities the marshes of Sochi-Guatemala, Gzhel-Amatitlan ...
The entire trip of Sergey Viktorovich ended in Guatemala by no means a standard event - a meeting with the foreign ministers or their representatives from all the countries that are part of the Central American Integration System, TSARI.
It was a kind of seminar for the heads of diplomatic departments of several countries of Central America and the Caribbean. A great opportunity for S. Lavrov to share with his colleagues in the region of the world, far from Russia, assessments of the development of international relations and views on the possibilities of expanding Russia’s relations with the countries of the continent. Taking into account the erudition and professional experience of our minister, we can say that a “master class” of diplomacy took place.
The trip was very productive and politically important. Although our minister diligently avoided assessing the policies of Washington and his allies - unlike the US officials, he had to engage in dialogue with journalists at every opportunity. When asked why in Yemen, where the current president fled the country, the United States supports him, not the rebels, when in Ukraine, on the contrary, supported the Maidan and refused to support the legitimate president V. Yanukovych, S. Lavrov had to repeat his assessment theory and practice of "double standards". As a result, he spoke out against all unconstitutional forms of overthrowing legitimate governments.
Summarizing the results of his trip, we can say that she became successful in all respects. Unity of views was found with all interlocutors on issues such as strengthening the role of the UN and the Security Council, supporting integration processes in Latin America and the Caribbean, refusing to glorify Nazism, jointly combat drug trafficking, and prevent natural disasters. consequences, support of events dedicated to the 70 anniversary of Victory. It is a pity that Russia does not yet have the material and technical resources to consolidate the results of the trip. S. Lavrov had to rely on the expansion of direct contacts between the business circles of Russia and the Central American countries.
Beijing is actively working in this region, the Chinese even set their sights on the construction of a direct-flow, open-air canal between the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean across Nicaragua. They are willing to spend billions of dollars on this project 40-50. Unfortunately, hundreds of billions of our dollars are tightly bricked up in offshore - as a result of bungling "reorganizations" and "reforms."
The US press responded extremely sharply to the trip of S. Lavrov. Russia, they say, plays with muscles in distant lands, minimizing the effect of Western sanctions. Right!
This is normal - symmetrical or asymmetrical, as you like - the answer to systematic, far from friendly US actions against Russia.
But the answer is not aimed at heightening international tension, but focused on strengthening friendship and cooperation with those countries that have suffered from US violence for centuries.
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