MOSCOW. Feb 19 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the situation surrounding Iran's nuclear program would hopefully be resolved peacefully.
"No matter how things will proceed with Iran's nuclear program, I hope after all, that this issue will be settled peacefully, and a solution will be looked for along political-diplomatic lines," Lavrov said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio.
Lavrov acknowledged that the international community still had questions for Iran.
"Part of the questions remains on the table. Iran has yet to respond to them, and they are quite serious. One must indeed understand how individual documents related to military nuclear technology have got to Iran. Iran says it does not want to provide explanations, he said.
"They said, 'We are not going to. We sort of got them by mail. We did not ask. They were sent to us as an advertisement.' We really need more coherent explanations than this," Lavrov said.
The parties are making constructive efforts to settle Iran's nuclear problem, he continued.
"Proposals, made to Iran rather long ago, which we hoped Iran would respond to positively, envisioned not only a settlement of the nuclear problem. They listed benefits Iran would gain. First, Security Council sanctions would end. And second, the countries that introduced their unilateral compulsion measures would cancel them and Iran would gain access to the World Trade Organization, to modernize its aviation [industry] and many other things; but it [Iran] has now been barred from it for various reasons," Lavrov said.