JAKARTA, August 9. /TASS/. Moscow and Jakarta have agreed to increase contacts between their special service in the fight against the Islamic State terror group (IS, outlawed in Russia), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following his talks with Indonesian top diplomat Retno Marsudi on Wednesday.
"We confirmed that our countries have similar or close positions on the majority of global and regional issues," Lavrov said. "Like Indonesia, we believe that any conflicts and crises should be resolved in accordance with international law and the United Nations’ principles, through political dialogue, negotiations and the search for compromises, while foreign interference is unacceptable," the Russian foreign minister pointed out.
"In this regard, we are concerned over the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, despite certain progress in the Syrian settlement process and the fight against terrorism," Lavrov went on to say. "The threat that the ISIL [the former name of the IS - TASS] is, has not vanished. Its members have been spreading all over the world, including the areas close to the Russian and Indonesian borders," Lavrov said.
"We have agreed that our special services will pay particular attention to increasing coordination in our joint efforts to fight this scourge," he stressed. "We will boost cooperation in this sphere both on bilateral level and on the Russia-ASEAN platform," he added.
"We have confirmed the goal set by that our leaders, which is to increase the volume of trade to five billion dollars," the Russian foreign minister said. "The current volume of our trade is nearing three billion dollars and I am sure that we will rapidly move forward," Lavrov added.
According to him, during the talks it was also confirmed that Russia "will provide favorable conditions for Indonesia’s exports, particularly as far as fish and other foods are concerned." "We have also agreed that we will continue to ensure favorable conditions for each other’s companies," the Russian top diplomat pointed out. "All these issues will be thoroughly discussed at the 12th meeting of the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation, which we have agreed to hold in Moscow in October," he added.
Lavrov said that at the meeting, the parties had discussed "military and technical issues of mutual interest." "We are interested in supporting Indonesia’s ability to counter any threats, today, we have talked a lot about the threat of terrorism, which we all have been facing," the Russian foreign minister added.
Lavrov pointed out that there was a joint Russian-Indonesian commission on military cooperation. "It’s meeting took place in Jakarta at the end of last year, and we see that the issues that were touched upon at the meeting have been under active consideration," he added.
Indonesian Ambassador to Russia Wahid Supriyadi earlier told TASS that the two countries were close to reaching contract concerning the delivery of the Sukhoi Su-35 aircraft to Indonesia.