MOSCOW. Jan 13 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with former Lebanese Prime Minister, Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal movement leader Saad Hariri in Paris on Sunday to discuss the Lebanese situation in the context of the Syrian crisis.
"The meeting highlighted pressing regional affairs, primarily, the situation in Lebanon, including the implications of a variety of external factors in the context of the Syrian crisis," says a Russian Foreign Ministry report released on Monday.
"The Russian side stressed the principled policy of support for the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Lebanese Republic, and the right of the people of Lebanon to independently determine the future of their country with consent between the leading political and religious forces within the framework of law and without foreign diktat," the report said.
"S.V. Lavrov stressed the absence of an alternative to the political and diplomatic settlement of the Syrian crisis, which would meet the interests of the entire Middle East, and the impermissibility of foreign interference in Syrian affairs, which primarily played into the hands of international terrorism and extremism," it said.