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Russia and ASEAN mulling business summit in November

The high level of political interaction offers a fair ground for building up economic ties, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says

KUALA LUMPUR, August 5. /TASS/. A new summit of top business executives from Russia and ASEAN nations may be held in November 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday at a Russia-ASEAN ministerial conference.

He indicated that the high level of political interaction offered a fair ground for building up economic ties.

"Along with it, our joint potential is not utilized in full yet and we support the proposals to step up action on a roadmap for trade and investment that was adopted in 2012," Lavrov said. "We propose to augment it with new well-specified projects. Hopefully, a detailed discussion of the issue will be held at a Russia-ASEAN conference of economics minister here in Kuala Lumpur on August 25."

"An agreement on a free trade zone between the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) and Vietnam was signed in May," Lavrov said. "We’re ready to make it a pilot project for a general liberalization (of trade and investment — TASS) between the EEC and ASEAN."

"Business missions to Southeast-Asian countries have become regular and the plans for the rest of this month feature missions to Malaysia and Brunei," he said. "Currently we’re working on a new Russia-ASEAN business summit that will be held in Kuala Lumpur in November."

Lavrov called attention to a smoothly functioning mechanism of the conferences that bring together senior officials from Russia and ASEAN countries who discuss the struggle with cross-border crime.

"We propose to append the mandate of this workgroup with the measures to counter money-laundering, the financing of terrorism, drugs trafficking and cybercrime," he said.