HAVANA, February 19. /TASS/. Havana is interested in expanding ties with BRICS, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following talks with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla.
"We took note of our Cuban friends’ ongoing and even increasing interest in cooperating with BRICS. As the group’s current chair, Russia will support this attitude. I am confident that other member states will react positively to Cuba’s application for [partner] status in BRICS," Lavrov pointed out.
"The humanitarian field, culture and education is a very important area of cooperation with a long history," the top diplomat noted.
Lavrov emphasized that during the negotiations, Russia and Cuba had highly appreciated the coordination of the two countries' activities on the international stage. "We share the same position in favor of respect for the UN Charter in all its depth and interrelation of all its principles. We fully agree on the need to establish a fairer and more democratic world order based on the principle of the sovereign equality of countries, which was enshrined in the United Nations Charter back in 1945 but has been ignored by the West in almost all situations that emerged on the international stage since the creation of the UN," Lavrov stressed.