#7 - JRL 7189
Disagreements on Iraq should not lead to confrontation in foreign relations - Russian foreign minister

KYIV. May 20 (Interfax) - Disagreements in approaches to settling international crises like that in Iraq should not lead to confrontation in international relations, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has said.

Speaking to students and the faculty of the Foreign Relations Institute under the Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University on Tuesday, Ivanov again criticized U.S. attempts to resolve the problem of Iraq forcefully and behind the UN's back.

"We clearly see a trend towards building a unipolar system of international relations based on the logic of military dominance and unilateral actions bypassing the UN and international law. This trend has fully manifested itself and is continuing to affect things in the context of the dramatic developments of the Iraq crisis," the Russian minister said.

"However, we do not take the view that different views on ways to settle such crises should lead to confrontation in international relations," Ivanov said.

"A radical difference between the present situation and the Cold War times is that countries, as a rule, are not against each other but are against this or that option for solving international problems that affect the interests of the international community," he said.

"The common ground in this is the desire to find an optimal solution to this problem," Ivanov said.