MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/: Russia does not seek to create an alternative to the current system of international relations, which is no longer western-centric, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the media after a video conference with the foreign ministers of India and China, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Wang Yi.
"I see no reasons for calling the current world system western-centric," Lavrov said. "The West will certainly go ahead with attempts to make it western-centric, to cling to the centuries of its colonial domination in world politics. At least some Western countries will be doing that. Examples of this can be seen in the policies of some of our partners. But as we develop cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or BRICS, or within the troika of Russia, India and China (RIC), as in this particular case, we by no means try to create an alternative to the current system of international relations."
Lavrov recalled that "the system of international relations, enshrined in the UN Charter, directly encourages the development of regional cooperation organizations.
"There is a special chapter, Chapter 8 of the UN Charter, in which such interaction is encouraged," he said. "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the RIC group, the Eurasian Economic Union and the CSTO, just as the organizations that exist in Europe - the European Union, NATO and the OSCE, all these organizations fit in well with what the UN Charter describes as regional agreements. The UN Charter unequivocally encourages these regional organizations to address the issues that concern specific ties among the participants in such a regional organization and that are within its range of competences.
"In this respect we merely follow the mainstream trend that was determined at the moment the UN was founded," Lavrov said.
