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Russia keeps door open to West for discussing Eurasian security — Lavrov

As the Russian foreign minister emphasized, the concept of Euro-Atlantic security in its current shape had exhausted itself, and it is more promising to talk about Eurasian security

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. The door is open to the Western countries for discussing Eurasian security, but they need to "behave themselves " and not bring the US likes and dislikes with them to complement the agenda, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Sputnik, Govorit Moskva and Komsomolskaya Pravda radio stations.

As Lavrov emphasized, the concept of Euro-Atlantic security in its current shape had exhausted itself, and it is more promising to talk about Eurasian security, which is "much more natural, because it is one continent, and no one participates in this procedure from across the ocean."

This concept should be based on the unification of all the projects that already exist now - the EAEU, the CSTO, the SCO, and the CIS.

"We will keep the door open to the western part of the continent as well - to everyone. But, of course, this is our common realm, and all are required to behave themselves, and not bring into these future constructions the likes and dislikes of the Americans, who will definitely be poking their nose into all these processes, just as they are now sticking their nose into the Asia-Pacific Region, the Indian Ocean and many other places," Lavrov said.

At the same time, as he pointed out, unlike the United States, China does not resort to dictating when proposing its projects.

On the contrary, it is constructive. "It says: we can offer this and that economic project for building a railroad either in Central Asia, or in Africa, or somewhere else. The solutions are reached on the basis of a balance of interests. This is exactly the case in our relations with the People's Republic of China. We saw a record growth in trade of 240 billion [dollars] last year, and it will certainly continue to increase," Lavrov said. China's Belt and Road Initiative creates a material basis for future security arrangements.