MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. Sovereign equality of states is still one of the fundamental principles in international relations that has not been challenged yet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Saturday in his address to the 27th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.

"One of the fundamental principles in the United Nations Charter is sovereign equality of states," he said. "Yes, I know that there are some assessments of how nuclear states can speak about equality. In fact, the UN Charter set a legal framework which determined sovereign equality of states as a fundamental principle that has not been contested since then," he added.

Russia’s foreign minister pointed out that notwithstanding the fact that nuclear states do exist in the world, "after the emergence of the ‘nuclear five’, the principle of sovereign equality of states was reinstated in the signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."

Lavrov added that Russia attempts to draft a positive agenda for multilateral work on any pressing global issues, including climate, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), cybersecurity and counterterrorism.

"We try to work constructively with all keen players," he said. "At the same time, we do not lose hope that it might be possible to find common ground with those partners with whom we do not get along well," he concluded.