Negotiation only way out of crisis, FM says

Negotiations are the only way for solving the Ukraine crisis, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Wednesday, calling on the United States to "stand on the side of peace and justice" to ease the situation in Ukraine.

Commenting on remarks made by US Department of State spokesman Ned Price on Monday that Russia is "violating … what have been the cardinal rules of the international order… that big countries cannot bully small countries", Zhao said the US itself has violated such rules.

What the US did to Cuba, Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria from the 1960s to the 2010s are "textbook examples of big countries bullying small ones", Zhao said.

The solution to the Ukraine crisis does not lie in making unilateral decisions according to one's own standards about what a rules-based international order is, let alone force countries to take sides and create the chilling effect of labeling countries as friend or foe.

"The world wants peace instead of war, justice instead of overbearingness, and cooperation instead of confrontation," Zhao said.

"This is what most countries want. There is only one system in the world, which is the international system with the United Nations at the center. There is only one order, which is the international order based on international law.

"There is only one set of rules, which is the basic rules of an international order based on the UN Charter's purpose and principles."

In another development, Zhao urged the US to stop opposing the establishment of a special verification mechanism on biological weapons to restore the world's confidence in its willingness to implement international duties and help improve global biological security.

More efforts

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there are "almost 30" US military biological laboratories "just in Ukraine alone", and Russia will "double and triple" its efforts to end the US blocking of the establishment of the verification mechanism under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, reported TASS on Tuesday.

The US has an obligation to obey the convention and clarify the concerns of the international community, Zhao said.

The world has long been concerned about the biological military activities that the US conducts at home and abroad, an issue that has already existed before the Ukraine crisis broke out, Zhao said.

"We welcome the international community to jointly review Russia's revelation under the framework of the convention and the UN, and to listen to the US clarifications fairly and justly," Zhao said.

The international community can take this as an opportunity to restart the negotiation process for the establishment of a verification mechanism, he added.