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Russia views attempts to undermine ASEAN’s role as very dangerous — Lavrov

According to the foreign minister, Russia wants the Asian-Pacific region to have "a modern and meeting the reality architecture of equal and indivisible security"

VIENTIANE, July 7. /TASS/. Moscow believes that equal and indivisible security in the Asian-Pacific region can be ensured only with the central unifying role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and all attempts to undermine this ASEAN’s position are extremely dangerous, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his Laotian counterpart Saleumxay Kommasith.

According to Lavrov, Russia wants the Asian-Pacific region to have "a modern and meeting the reality architecture of equal and indivisible security that would encourage ensuring peace and stability here as well as the most favorable conditions for stable development".

"Russia is convinced that this architecture’s work can be ensured only on the basis of what was reached over the past decades in the framework of processes formed around ASEAN’s central role," Lavrov pointed out. "We consider as very dangerous the attempts seen over the past few years to undermine this central role of ASEAN, and instead of unifying formats of cooperation in this region to impose formats, which divide and are based on the concepts of containment and the concepts of forming division lines".

"All this does not meet the aspirations and interests of peoples of this leading region of the world, which has become a driving force of the world economy," Lavrov stressed.