Senior Russian diplomat Sergei Ryabkov slammed the West’s unilateral sanctions against Iran as being incompatible with the accepted norms of the international system

Senior Russian diplomat Sergei Ryabkov slammed the West's unilateral sanctions against Iran as being incompatible with the accepted norms of the international system.

In an interview with the Russian newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Ryabkov, Russia's deputy foreign minister and chief negotiator in P5+1 said that from a political viewpoint, unilateral sanctions were destructive because they undermined the authority of the Security Council, IRNA reported.

He argued that unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran by the West did not comply with generally accepted norms of international behavior.

“The signal that the supporters of such actions would like to convey to the Iranians, simply does not reach them, because the recipient sees it all as [a set of] illegitimate actions,” he added.

The Russian diplomat said that the using coercive methods such as the imposition of sanctions to force countries into compliance were doomed to fail.

“With regard to relations between nations, attempts by anyone to tell others how to behave, and even use sanctions, essentially coercive methods for this purpose, I'm sure, are doomed to failure…. Accordingly, we have to go the other way and negotiate - unavoidably, negotiate,” he said.

Ryabkov said offering negotiation to Iran should be done “without prejudicing our positions and priorities - I mean both Russia and the other members of the Six.” He added that Russia's step-by-step approach which had been declared by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov pursued that goal.

“It's about a scheme of action made up of several stages, whose implementation is possible only and exclusively on the principle of reciprocity,” he said. “That's the alternative we offer to the Iranians and we are satisfied that the step-by-step approach and the principle of reciprocity as the basis for negotiating are shared by the other participants of the Six,” Ryabkov concluded.