MOSCOW, June 18./TASS/. The global community will be able to cope with the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic only through pooling efforts, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an address to the participants of a high-level video conference within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. The text was uploaded to the website of the Foreign Ministry on Thursday.
"The situation necessitates that we all join efforts. It is important to also see new possibilities in the current difficulties - understanding of inadmissibility of discriminatory approaches in foreign trade, giving up on currency monopoly in foreign trade and finance, fast digitalization of all sides of life," Lavrov noted.
"Deep inter-regional cooperation, encouragement of integration processes is among the effective, time proved means of overcoming economic crises. We can emerge from the current difficult situation stronger and self-confident only together, through harmonizing interests and synchronizing actions," Lavrov stressed.
According to the top Russian diplomat, Moscow supports the moves taken by Beijing within the Belt and Road Initiative, and deems them as timely. Russia favors the creation of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, which is already taking shape through the creation of regional organizations and the signing of trade and economic agreements among states. Russia believes that the Greater Eurasian Partnership must be an ‘integration of integrations’ - a common economic space that any interested state can join.
"Within this context, we give priority attention to conjugating the Belt and Road construction and plans to develop the Eurasian Economic Union - one of the most advanced regional integration unions," he went on to say. "An agreement on trade-economic cooperation between the EEU and the People’s Republic of China came into effect in October 2019 and now the Eurasian Economic Commission, the executive body of the Union, and the Chinese government are forming joint working bodies," the foreign minister said. "Work is to be launched on concrete sectoral projects within the framework of these mechanisms. We expect to soon see the tangible results of these efforts," he summed up.