MOSCOW, May 16. /TASS/. Russia will build its relations with Latin American countries on an individual and pragmatic basis, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday.

"We have been building and will build our relations with Latin America on the basis of individual and pragmatic approach to each concrete situation or problem trying to avoid standard solutions and focusing on points of contacts and coincidence of interests in a bid to promote common positions within global and regional formats," he said at an international conference dedicated to the 55th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Latin America.

"Russia and Latin America are thousands of kilometers away from each other. It is a constant value which will always be present in our relations, despite everything," the Russian diplomat noted. "But in the present-day conditions, it is not a decisive component of relations, it is not a factor that may block other things."

"With globalization and development of communications means, objective difficulties of the Russian-Latin American ties are becoming obsolete," he said. "Most important here, like in any other joint undertaking, is our commitment to cooperation, willingness to work together with a goal to build a safer and fairer world, in the interests of the development of our countries and raising living standards of our nations."

"As far as we understand, our national interests, the interests of Russia and Latin American and Caribbean state, coincide," Ryabkov said. "It means that we can say that the Russia-Latin America relations we are planning to further build on the pragmatic basis and without ideological and minute-serving approaches have good prospects."