TASHKENT, August 19. /TASS/. The United States is harboring plans to widen NATO’s presence into the Asia-Pacific Region by way of its AUKUS and QUAD pacts, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said at the 17th meeting of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) security council secretaries on Friday.
"In the Asia-Pacific region, the United States and its allies are also creating restricted blocs, trying to draw the greatest number of states into their ranks based on anti-Russian or anti-Chinese principles. This can be vividly demonstrated by the arrangements under the AUKUS [Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States] and QUAD [the quadrilateral union of the United States, Japan, India and Australia] pacts," Patrushev pointed out.
As Russia’s security chief stressed, "Washington intends to begin NATO’s expansion in the region, relying on their potential."
The West’s plans also envisage imposing its own trade-financial mechanisms within the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy, he said.
"There are no doubts that the Americans want to continue their geopolitical experiments in other regions of the world - in the Middle East, and also in Africa and Latin America," Patrushev said.
The meeting of the SCO security council secretaries is being held ahead of a summit of the leaders of the organization’s member states in Samarkand scheduled for September 15-16.