BRICS forum participants call for pragmatic cooperation in various spheres

MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/. The BRICS countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, should seek closer pragmatic cooperation in various spheres and promote the United Nations reform to make it reflect the real balance of powers in the world, according to participants in the first BRICS parliamentary forum that opened in Moscow on Monday. Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, called on the BRICS countries, which have enormous aggregate resources, to strengthen pragmatic cooperation in various spheres. "We must use the advantages of our political cooperation and mutual complementarity in the economic sphere to create new effects of these benefits," he said. "In the trade and economic sphere, we should take steps towards a common market, multi-level mechanism of currency swaps, infrastructure projects and closer cooperation on the basis of people’s support." He underscored that the guarantee of such cooperation was the BRICS development bank and the currency pool of the BRICS member countries. Renan Calheiros, the President of Brazil’s Senate, called on the BRICS countries to take efforts to promote changes in international structures, including the United Nations Security Council, to make their activities more efficient and consistent with the real balance of powers in the world. He said his country’s government had been promoting this idea for the past decades. "The BRICS’s support to such a reform will obviously help strengthen partnership between our countries and deepen our political dialogue," he said. Shashi Tharoor, the head of the Indian parliament’s international committee, also spoke about the necessity of reforms of the United Nations. He said the inability of international structures to maintain peace and stability had become obvious. In his words, the model of world governance needed urgent reforms, since neither of the world powers could address the current challenges alone. He called to support the United Nations’ key role and reforms of that organization. Thandi Modise, the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces of the South African Parliament, called on the BRICS legislatures to use all available instruments to promote peace and security in the their countries. She said the task for BRICS lawmakers was to make their contribution to the promotion of the BRICS interests. The first BRICS parliamentary forum opened in Moscow on Monday. Russia is represented by speakers of both houses of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko of the Federation Council upper house and Sergei Naryshkin of the State Duma lower house, other lawmakers and officials from federal agencies. Read more