International Orthodox Christian News

"In spite of all talks on their adherence to international law and respect of people's choice, these (Western) countries have always acted in their own interests and apply quite contrary principles in various cases," deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said on air of the Soyuz TV channel.

He believes, it is Russia's priority task to defend "its free, original political choice and be not afraid to tell the West: "you live as you like and we will live as we like," forming our political system and our society, setting its laws and rules the way which is natural for our nation, its destiny, mentality and historical ways."

The priest urged to realize that "all talks about shared human values, declarations that we can embrace and kiss all nations of the world disarmed before them have nothing to do with real politics."

"We should be strong, and in military aspect as well, we should have will and ability to stop any invasion on our life style, our interests in the world, our ability to influence the processes developing in the world," Fr. Vsevolod said.

He stressed, Russia "will never be obedient and leaded element of the world system, it will always offer both its people and neighboring nations its way of historical development," and expressed opinion that vector of contemporary Western development "is a direction to nowhere."

"It's impossible to survive for the society deprived of faith as a foundation of public life, deprived of any objectives except consumer ones and the idea to impose an existing model of democracy all around the globe as it is convenient to American banks, Western governments, world economical and media elite," the priest said.

He stressed that Russia can offer the world another way and "we will do it." "However, we need to remain strong, to be determined to say "no" to everyone who tries to spread their influence in the world at our expense, by way of infringement of our interest," the Moscow Patriarchate representative said.

He also criticized the attempt of the West to "violently impose its line on all nations."

"Why does West believe, and President Bush stated it clearly, that only one form of democracy, one form of people's participation in taking decisions, the Western form, is compulsory and should be set out in all nations and all countries!" the priest wonders.

He noted that western countries were "not ashamed to apply quite different standards in various situations."

"We remember very well, how the West backed up the right of nations for self-determination in Kosovo, it was only few months ago, then the idea of territorial integrity was omitted and rejected. Today the West insists that the principle of territorial integrity of Georgia should be protected at all costs," the priest stated.

According to him, the West "didn't hesitated to introduce its troops in various countries, no matter that people there have never asked for it, neither referendums nor votes were held on the question, and sometimes there weren't even parliamentary decisions on whether American or NATO troops were needed."

"In this case no one pays attention to democracy, legal principle appears to be impotent before the ideas of national interest and promotion of political system and democracy in its Western variant, President Bush and leaders of other Western countries care for so much," Fr. Vsevolod said.

He also pointed out that Russian peacemakers in South Ossetia were accused "of not being neutral and thus should be changed to representatives of NATO or the European Union."

"Are these countries indeed more neutral? The countries that are being involved in the conflict on one side, the countries that haven't even mentioned the violence committed against people of South Ossetia who now are in serious pain from this violence!" the priest said.

Source:

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=dujour&div=174