By Bernama
Paris : Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov leaves France for Senegal on Wednesday, to take part in the 11th summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that will be held in the Senegalese capital Dakar on March 13-14.
“For Russia – a country with a major portion of the Muslim population – the strengthening of friendly relations and cooperation with the Muslim world is a strategic course,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin, as saying ahead of Lavrov’s visit.
“Cooperation between Russia and the Muslim world is becoming especially needed now when the international community is facing the growing manifestations of inter-confessional misunderstanding and alienation,” the diplomat said.
The Foreign ministry spokesman said it is important that constructive interaction between us and Muslim states as it is steadily gaining dynamics and developing on both bilateral and multi-lateral basis in the political and economic spheres.
“Special attention is given to issues of ensuring international law observance and security, political settlement of conflict situations, fighting against international terrorism, creation of an atmosphere of tolerance and developing of the dialogue of civilizations,” according to Kamynin.
“OIC is an influential international organization that contributes on a large scale to the search for solutions to key present-day problems. It unites 57 countries,” Kamynin noted.
On June 30, 2005 Russia officially got the status of observer in the organization and since then Russian representatives have been regularly invited to events held by the OIC.
On Tuesday, the Russian foreign minister took part in a session of the Russian-French Security Cooperation Council, at which he said that his upcoming trip to the Middle East on March 19-21 would help find out about the readiness of the sides for calling a Middle East conference in Moscow.
“A trip to the Middle East next week will help to understand who are ready and who are not yet. If all are ready, we are also ready to host such a meeting,” he noted.
“Partners on the Quartet came out in favor of holding a Moscow conference on the Middle East soon after a meeting in Annapolis,” Lavrov reminded, adding that Russia is ready if all interested parties will demonstrate a bid to follow that path.
The Russian-French Council also touched upon the theme of territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty of Lebanon.
“We support any initiatives aimed at ensuring territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Lebanon,” the top Russian diplomat said.
Russia wants that “the crisis with the election of a new president be solved as soon as possible. We seek to contribute to that by using our connections in the region,” Lavrov added.
“We are confident that there must be no interference from outside in internal affairs of Lebanon, no matter which side they would come from,” he stressed.