MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. Latin American integration processes have entered a difficult period in part due to foreign interference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday in an interview with Prensa Latina news agency.

"Currently, integration processes in Latin America have entered a difficult period. We are witnessing the misalignment of regional integration, and foreign powers play a role in it," he said. "This concerns UNASUR (Union of South American Nations - TASS). Some of its members have left the union to establish a different organization - Forum for the Progress and Development of South America (Prosur)."

Moscow believes that Latin American states must determine the forms of regional cooperation that are most convenient for them, Lavrov said. "For our part, we are ready to develop mutually beneficial cooperation with all regional integration unions," he continued. "We have always supported a united, politically and economically stable Latin America. Only under these conditions, the region can establish itself as one of the pillars of an emerging multipolar world. Moreover, Latin Americans have always been known for their high level of unity and mutual understanding, for their ability to find collective responses to modern challenges."

Lavrov has noted the potential of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), which has become "a unique regional platform promoting a unifying agenda on a non-confrontational basis." According to the Russian minister, Moscow hopes that during Mexico’s chairmanship at CELAC, the organization’s members will be able to overcome their differences based on a new working program approved in January at a meeting in Mexico City. "Overcoming these differences could help us renew dialogue mechanisms between Russia and CELAC in the form most convenient for our partners," Lavrov stated.

The Russian top diplomat mentioned the prospects for expanding cooperation with CELAC in the sphere of aerospace development, emergency prevention and response with support from a regional Russian-Cuban emergency response facility in Havana. Russia and CELAC can also cooperate on establishing a regional system of antimicrobial monitoring with the aid of the Latin American Biotechnology Institute Project in Nicaragua, supported by the Russian government.