Moscow rejects the concepts of limited state sovereignty and the right of humanitarian intervention preached by some states, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Thursday, agencies reported.
Some Western nations and aid groups have used the theories to justify intervention by the international community in states without the agreement of the governments concerned, for example to prevent a genocide.
The idea was used in part to justify NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia over Kosovo, where Belgrade's security forces were said to be massacring ethnic Albanian separatists.
Moscow was fiercely opposed to the alliance's military intervention there.
The notions "inevitably take us outside international law and therefore the civilised relations between states," Ivanov told a conference organised by the ITAR-TASS news agency.
"The worst example of this has been given, so it happens, by the countries that consider themselves to be the epitome of the idea of democratic states ruled by law," said Ivanov, referring to NATO's Kosovo air campaign.
Calling into question the sovereignty of individual states meant "overturning the entire system of international law," Ivanov warned.
"The main source of legal norms in all areas of international relations, should remain the United Nations," Russia's chief diplomat said -- MOSCOW (AFP)
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