Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia speaks at a Security Council meeting on the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal, at the UN headquarters in New York, April 5, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
UNITED NATIONS, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said the world needs more multilateralism rather than unilateralism.
The current situation is more complex than in the 1960s and 1970s during the Cold War when the world was more predictable, the Russian envoy said at a press conference on Thursday.
At that time each side had clear communication channels, and knew their friends or enemies' limits. In contrast, none of those conditions exists today, Nebenzia said.
"We are losing a lot of multilateralism, despite the fact that the world went from bipolar to unipolar and now to multipolars," he said.
"We don't need to be loved, but we require more dialogue and normal relations among major powers," Nebenzia added.
The current world situation is not healthy and dialogues at multiple levels are needed, not just presidential summits, the envoy said.
On the Syria issue, the ambassador said Russia hopes that it will become an integral, sovereign country free from foreign intervention. The priority for the Syrian issue will be political settlement, and reconstruction should have started much earlier.
Nebenzia said that the U.S. presence in Syria is "illegal" and the U.S. government confirmed that it would withdraw its troops from the country earlier. However, the United States still retains its military presence in Syria on the pretext of fighting terrorism.