BEIJING, March 30. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s arrival in China for a third ministerial conference of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries confirms tight coordination of regional strategies between Russia and China, the director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at Lanzhou University, Zhu Yongbiao, said on Wednesday.
"Russia has always been an important party on Afghan issues and it shares a lot of common concerns with China," the Chinese daily Global Times quotes Zhu as saying. "Lavrov's visit also showed the close strategic coordination between China and Russia on issues related to regional security."
The expert stressed that despite the Ukrainian crisis representatives from Russia and the US agreed to join in the meeting together, which "underscores China's influence and capability in mediating heated issues."
He pointed out that Beijing had made great efforts to promote the meetings on Afghanistan. Aside from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visits to Afghanistan and relevant countries last week "with the purpose to make the communication mechanism more diversified and fairer" China also invited Indonesia and Qatar - "two countries that had made important contributions in previous Afghan internal reconciliation" - to join the upcoming meetings.
As the Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier, Lavrov arrived in Tunxi, Anhui province for participating in a conference on Afghanistan on March 31. On March 30 he is to hold talks with foreign counterparts, including China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.