UNITED NATIONS: The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Sergei Lavrov, said on Saturday the United States and its Western allies were unable to change their cold war “genetic code” and said US should abandon its claims of “eternal uniqueness”.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Lavrov said the grave threat posed by Islamic State (IS) “requires a comprehensive approach if we want to eradicate its root causes”.

The IS, formerly known as ISIS, is just a part of the problem.

“We propose to launch under the auspices of the UN Security Council an in-depth study on the extremist and terrorist threats in all their aspects across the MENA area. The integrated approach implies also that the longstanding conflicts should be examined, primarily between Arab nations and Israel.

“The absence of settlement of the Palestinian issue over several decades remains, as it is widely recognised as one of the main factors of instability in the region that helps the extremists to recruit more and more new Jihadists.”

He decried Western support for the foes of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. “The struggle against terrorists in the territory of Syria should be structured in cooperation with the Syrian government which clearly stated its readiness to join it,” he added.

“We warned against a temptation to make allies with almost anybody who proclaimed himself an enemy of [Syrian President] Assad: be it Al Qaeda, Jabhat an Nusra and other ‘fellow travellers’ seeking the change of regime, including ISIS, which today is in the focus of our attention.”

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2014