German foreign minister: UN Security Council has never been so incapable

Baku. 9 December. REPORT.AZ/ German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday that the United Nations Security Council has never been more incapable than today.

“A dispute between Russia and the United States over the Ukraine conflict has blocked the work of the UN main institutions,” Steinmeier said in a lecture delivered to the students of the Yekaterinburg-based Urals Federal University.

“This is a source of serious concern. Never before in the past few decades has the Security Council played a more vital role and has been more important than it is today,” the German foreign minister went on to say, informs Report citing TASS.

He believes that joint efforts to end the Ukraine crisis will make it possible to overcome this incapableness.

The German foreign minister expressed hope that the peak of military standoff in Ukraine has passed.

“I believe that we have managed to avert the most serious military confrontation in Ukraine. I hope that my forecast will prove to be true in the next several days or weeks,” Steinmeier said in his lecture.

But the threat of a new iron curtain will remain if we do not exert enough efforts to prevent this scenario, he added.

“I hope we will manage to overcome the split if both sides demonstrate good will,” Steinmeier told the students.

“It is our advantage that we have not seen a new war but it is also our responsibility not to appease events that may lead not only to cold but also to hot wars,” the German foreign minister said.

Walter-Frank Steinmeier is an honorary doctor of the Urals Federal University which has invited him to visit Yekaterinburg, the administrative center of Russia’s Urals region. Steinmeier has been to Yekaterinburg six times and each time he traditionally reads a lecture to the students of the Urals Federal University.