Russia and China have agreed to discuss ways to deepen their security cooperation in Asia and Europe to counter attempts by the United States to impose its will on the region, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
“For a long time, there was a Euro-Atlantic security structure in the form of NATO … as well as the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe],” Lavrov said in Beijing on Tuesday after talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
But these were not “structures within which it is possible to conduct meaningful negotiations and agree on something based on a balance of interests”.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, Lavrov said Moscow and Beijing had agreed to “start a dialogue with the involvement of our other like-minded people on this issue”.
The United States calls China its biggest rival and Russia its biggest threat. At a news conference after the meeting, Wang did not explicitly mention the US, NATO or the war in Ukraine, but said that China and Russia should “oppose hegemonism and power politics, oppose the monopoly of international affairs by a few countries”.
Credit: aljazeera.com
