MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. The BRICS intergovernmental group is not intended to be a new tool of hegemonic imperial diktat in world affairs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a session in Moscow of the first meeting under Russia’s BRICS chairmanship of the member states’ sherpas and sous-sherpas, the names given to the senior officials in charge of organizing major summit meetings and their deputies.

"All of this has not in the slightest been conceived with the goal to create a mechanism of a new form of diktat over the global majority, absolutely not," the top Russian diplomat said. "In all our actions, statements, declarations and in practice, all of our [member] countries have always been stressing that we are open at any moment to an honest and equitable dialogue," he added. That said, Lavrov noted that honest approaches on the part of Western leaders have not been seen for a long time, while equality is a "rare property which is clearly in limited supply."

The Russian foreign minister also said that "Washington and those who control the global monetary and financial system have proven their intractability and undependability." "It has become clear that all the sacred principles of the free market can be torn up and tossed aside in a flash, and be transformed into an instrument of enforcement against those [countries] that have evoked Washington’s displeasure on any given day. This can happen to any country," Lavrov stressed.

Under these conditions, regional integration processes have intensified. "BRICS, if you will, is a cooperation network of sorts for regional and sub-regional processes in Asian, African and Latin American countries, which will facilitate harmonization and the development of integration in the countries of the global majority at a global level," the top Russian diplomat said.