West can’t counter terrorism via double standards: Zarif

“The US and West will be unable to resolve the issue of terrorism by continuing to pursue their past policies,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a meeting with his Spanish opposite number José Manuel García-Margallo in New York on Friday.

The top Iranian diplomat added that it is impossible to fight against terrorists in Syria while seeking to weaken the country’s legal government.

“During four months of savage activities by the ISIL in Iraq, the Americans took no effective measure, namely cutting off direct and indirect aid to them (terrorists), in order to counter them,” Zarif added.

The ISIL terrorists control large parts of Syria’s east and north. ISIL also sent its Takfiri militants into Iraq in June, seizing large swathes of land straddling the border between Syria and Iraq.

The Takfiri terrorist group has committed heinous crimes including mass execution of people and beheading of their hostages.

The Spanish foreign minister, for his part, said Madrid stands ready to tap into its potential and hold political consultations with regional states, including Iran, in a bid to work out proper solutions to the existing woes in Iraq and Syria.

García-Margallo commended Iran’s effective role in the region and slammed Tehran’s not having been invited to an international conference in Paris on September 15 to discuss the threat posed by the ISIL Takfiri militants.

France hosted a conference, dubbed the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq, to discuss ways of tackling the ISIL terrorists in Iraq and Syria, but under the US pressure did not invite Iran to the event.