Moscow to partner with West along with Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa - Lavrov

MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. Moscow to co-operate with the West along with development of relations in the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and Africa, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TV news channel LifeNews and Izvestia daily. “An attempt to fulfil their, as they [the West] believe it to be, ‘a victory’ in the ‘Cold War’ was taken in view of the fact that the West had apparently got upset learning that there is no more Russia of the nineties of the previous century that said yes almost always and did not seek to protect its interests believing that a union with the West will settle almost all our problems,” Lavrov noted. “This was an anomaly absolutely inadequate for the history, Russia’s mission in the world and the need to ensure an equitable and just dialogue on issues of lawful interest for us,” the minister noted, adding that “When we began to protect our legitimate rights on the international scene, someone probably decided, “For what reason, as everything became clear, but Russians cannot calm down.” This is bad.” In his words, these are “throwbacks of imperial mind” that is “particularly deplorable amid our numerous initiatives aimed to seek balance of interests.” “We do not impose our interests on anyone and are ready to go into concessions, because we recognise legitimate interests of our partners not getting beyond international law,” the Russian foreign minister noted, adding that “We do the same thing not promoting certain plans which will be justified by our interests violating international law. No, we do not do this as well.” “If after all our partners would be slightly more pragmatic, more targeted at constructive dialogue than at imposing their values and their interests in detriment to Russian interests and values, many difficulties in our relations could have been avoided,” Lavrov said with confidence. “We are still ready for this dialogue,” the Russian minister said, noting that “Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed once again that we are ready for dialogue with Europe and the United States, but we will continue efforts started many years ago to broaden our relations with the Asia-Pacific states, Latin America and Africa.” “There are many promising partners there and we want to develop co-operation with them along with further expansion of partnership with our Western partners.” Read more on tass.ru