Lavrov: Russia not Isolated

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed U.S. and European suggestions that his country has become isolated since the August war with Georgia, Reuters reported.
 
“We don’t feel isolated at all,” Lavrov said on September 24. “I have had more requests for bilateral meetings during the current [UN General Assembly] session than in the past few years.”

The Russian foreign minister reiterated that Moscow had only responded to what he called Georgian aggression against South Ossetia. He said he was perplexed by the failure of Western powers to understand this.

After the talks with his U.S. counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, Lavrov told reporters that the disagreement on Georgia still persists between the two countries, but “we decided not to make this situation a rock,” according to AFP. 

Daniel Fried, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said that Rice told Lavrov “that the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was a mistake, it was quite a serious one, that Russia did not enjoy any significant international support.”

She also told him that “Russia had created grave difficulties for itself,” AFP quoted Fried as saying.

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