Warsaw’s decision to deny Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov his participation in a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in the Polish city of Lodz on December 1-2 is unprecedented and provocative and incompatible with the status of the organization’s chair, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
“The decision by Poland as the OSCE current chair to deny Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov his participation in a meeting of the Council of OSCE Foreign Ministers in the city of Lodz on December 1-2 is unprecedented and inflammatory. It is incompatible with the status of the chair of the organization, in which 57 countries participate as sovereign and independent states under the conditions of full equality,” the ministry said.
In the wake of Warsaw’s decision, Russia’s Permanent Representative at the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich will lead the Russian delegation at the organization’s ministerial meeting, it said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, nonetheless, stated it was convinced that “all politicians who have common sense share the Russian side’s position on the inadmissibility of such actions and will give a principled assessment of such moves. The relevant inquiry was yesterday sent to all the OSCE member states,” the statement reads.
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