Moscow hopes North Korea will not take new ‘irresponsible steps’ - Lavrov

ULAN BATOR, April 14. /TASS/. Russia expects that North Korea will listen to reason and refrain from taking new "irresponsible steps," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday voicing concern over the situation on the Korean Peninsula. "Pyongyang ignores the demands of the United Nations Security Council and continues threatening by missile and nuclear tests. We expect that the North Korean side will listen to reason and refrain from new irresponsible steps and realize the delusiveness of hopes to achieve the recognition of its nuclear status by the world community," Lavrov said at the lecture at the Mongolian Foreign Ministry. Moscow is convinced that the refusal from missile and nuclear programs and the return to full international political and economic life meets the interests of North Korea and creates conditions for fulfilling its sovereign rights for peaceful atom, he said. At the same time, Russia is concerned over the plans to use Pyongyang’s current actions as a pretext for an inadequate and disproportional reaction in the form of military buildup in Northeast Asia and changing the current balance of power, Lavrov said. "We believe it is absolutely inadmissible to return the region to another confrontational foothold, whip up the arms race here and deploy a new positional area of global antimissile defense of the United States," he stressed. Lavrov called to search for mutually acceptable solutions in creating reliable and efficient multilateral international and legal tools of peace and security in Northeast Asia. Read more