MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia hopes the United States does not take unilateral action toward North Korea, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday after Pyongyang's reported failed missile launch attempt over the weekend.
"We do not accept Pyongyang's reckless nuclear and missile actions in violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions, but this does not mean that it is possible to violate international law in the same way by using force," Lavrov said at a briefing.
Speaking alongside his Senegalese colleague Mankeur Ndiaye, Lavrov said, "I very much hope that there will be no unilateral actions, like those that we saw recently in Syria."
On April 14, US media said that US President Donald Trump might order a strike against North Korea in the event Pyongyang decided to carry out another nuclear weapon test. The reports came after Trump said that the North Korean nuclear issue would be "taken care of," while at the same time calling on China to pressure its neighbor into giving up its nuclear program. In response, the general staff of the North Korean armed forces threatened to launch a strike against US military bases in Japan and South Korea, as well as the presidential residence in Seoul in case of US aggression.
Earlier this year, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that the country’s government had never used weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, against the Syrian people. Besides, under a Russian-US deal after the east Ghouta sarin gas incident in 2013, Damascus joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and agreed to destroy its stockpile under Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) oversight. In January 2016, the OPCW announced that all chemical weapons in Syria had been destroyed.
