Press Release: Moscow, 31 May: Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, thanked him for Russia’s ‘positive neutrality’ during the recent Indo-Pak clash. He made these remarks during a 40-minute meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister before the start of the Eurasian Forum at Perm, outside Moscow. Lavrov met Senator Mushahid Hussain as part of a group of five prominent Asian politicians, including China, Turkey, Korea, and Cambodia.
Senator Mushahid was especially invited as the only guest from Pakistan by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ruling ‘United Russia’ party to deliver a keynote address at the Eurasian Forum, attended by over 100 delegates from 25 Eurasian countries.
The Russian Foreign Minister emphasised that Russian foreign policy aims at promoting peace, security, and stability in the region. Mushahid also appreciated President Putin’s Eurasian Security Initiative since it views Security as being ‘indivisible’, saying it was similar to President Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative, Upholding the UN Charter. Senator Mushahid rejected the notion of an ‘Asian NATO’ or ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ as these reflected militarisation of international relations. Later, together with the other key Asian leaders from China, Turkey, South Korea, and Cambodia, Senator Mushahid joined the Russian Foreign Minister at the Eurasian Forum. In his remarks at the Eurasian Forum, criticism was voiced of both the Quad and ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, two key pro-Western alliances of which India is a part, reflecting Russia’s public discontent with India’s pro-Western and anti-China role in Asia.
There were 3 key takeaways from the Russian Foreign Minister’s important policy speech at the Eurasian Forum, which are particularly relevant for Pakistan. First, he criticised the so-called ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, of which India is an integral part, saying ‘this Indo-Pacific had never existed and NATO made up the Indo-Pacific Strategy to drag India into their anti-China schemes’. Second, Lavrov indirectly criticised Indian participation in the four-country QUAD military alliance (US, Japan, Australia & India), in front of a strong 12-member Indian delegation, that included 3 parliamentarians from the ruling BJP Party. Lavrov said about India’s membership of QUAD, ‘we engaged in discussions with our Indian counterparts who emphasised that their intent in joining QUAD was confined exclusively to trade and economy (but) in practice, however, QUAD nations are already endeavouring, with notable persistence, to organise joint naval exercises’! There was a stunned silence from the Indian delegation at the conference in the face of such frank criticism. Third, Lavrov made another telling remark, this time about Afghanistan.
He accused NATO of trying to stage a comeback to Afghanistan: ‘four years after their ignominious retreat, NATO is once again seeking new points of entry into Afghanistan’. Speaking to the Russian media, Senator Mushahid Hussain thanked the Russian government and people for their positive role in the recent Indo-Pakistan crisis and their warmth and friendship towards Pakistan. He praised President Putin and President Xi Jinping as ‘two strong leaders who are marching forward together to build a peaceful and prosperous Eurasia, a quest in which Pakistan will play a key role as an equal partner’.
Speech of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
This is the year when the International Conference of Asian Political Parties commemorates its 25th anniversary. And because of their reputation and authority, they are a platform for exchanging views and experiences in the context of party-to-party cooperation. Cooperation at this level is one of our priorities.
It’s a very useful addition to the so-called classical diplomacy, and that contributes a lot to promoting mutual trust, mutual understanding between peoples.
We consider your conference and the creation of the conference to be a signal, a very clear signal to the entire world. And a very timely response to reconsider the place of the Asian countries in international and global developments. We assess very positively the increase of the political work of your conference. And we see with pleasure the sustainable process of expanding your influence in the continental architecture, in the architecture of regional organizations, some of which are experiencing erosion of their influence, if not degradation, since they abandoned practically all of the key principles of the United Nations Charter.
I have in mind such organizations on our Eurasian continent as the European Union, which became more Euro-Atlantic than Eurasian following NATO. And of course, OSCE was originally initiated by European countries and the Soviet Union. More than 50 years ago, when the Helsinki Conference was negotiated, they insisted that North America be brought in, the U.S. and Canada. And over the years, well, there was some period when very solemn and right statements and documents were adopted and signed, but then in the last 10-15 years, all these principles including equal and indivisible security, including the statement that no one, be it the country or organization, should prepare to dominate in Europe, all this was abandoned, violated. That’s why I will speak today at the Eurasian Conference, I will emphasize our assessment regarding the failure of Euro-Atlantic concepts.
We need Eurasia, of course. And by the way, Eurasia is the biggest, the richest continent. The continent, which, unlike Africa and Latin America, is home to several world civilizations with thousands and thousands of years of history. There are some civilizations, of course, Maya and others in Latin America, but they are no longer in existence. In Asia, Chinese, Indian. Pakistan, of course. Also, Türkiye is really trying to keep its traditions and to develop them to bring the new generation up to those traditions.
But with all these facts, Eurasia is the only continent that doesn’t have any universal continental structure, like the African Union in Africa, or CELAC in Latin America. We have quite a lot many integrational movements, organizations which address security issues, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, ASEAN, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and there is no umbrella.
Our friends from Kazakhstan have been for many years promoting the СICA, Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia. Now they want to transform it into an organization. We advise them that this organization should be very well prepared: the charter, the principles, the rights and obligations. Our strong belief is that it should be not just Asia, but Eurasia, inviting the western part of the continent to come. And one example, as I will speak about this a bit later, the Belorussians, who already for two consecutive years are convening Conference on Eurasian Security. I attended both, it is now an annual event, the third one will be held in October, and they invite European representatives, foreign ministers of Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia participated in the last conference, and it is important that we, while keeping the identity of all existing organizations, including your organization, we try to have some place where all countries and organizations of the continent can come, not necessarily to have it in the format of an organization, but a meeting, a meeting of all of them. So we are thinking in this direction, and I will elaborate on this a bit later today. Otherwise, I think that you are doing a very good job. We also know that you are in favor of holding more conferences with your partners in other parts of the world. And the Permanent Conference in Latin America, and the Council of African Political Parties, as I said, we are very much in favor of promoting party-to-party dialogue. Our ruling party, United Russia, in cooperation with other parliamentary parties and their factions, is promoting very actively this kind of cooperation. And I will highlight the initiative of United Russia of last year, when they convened a meeting of various parties to consider methods of fighting the new forms of colonialism and neo-colonialism, and now there is a movement created on the basis of the conference, which is called «Freedom of Nations». And we strongly support this. And actually, this theme, you know, the inadmissibility of neo-colonial forms of exploitation is one of the agenda items of the Group of Friends of the United Nations Charter in the United Nations. Last year, we initiated, through this group, the resolution of the UN Committee on Decolonization. The draft resolution supported by this committee was accepted by the United Nations General Assembly. There was some vote, of course, but a clear majority supported it, and the idea is to announce the 14th of December, the day of the adoption of The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples of 1960, as a date of fighting the new forms of neo-colonialism. It’s an interesting thing, and I believe your parties can also look at this, because colonial exploitation was very blunt. Slaves, you know, are digging the resources and leaving the countries in very poor condition. But now, if you take the economic system in the world, countries, especially in Africa, mostly produce, they provide natural resources to the western countries, and I always quote the statement of President of Uganda, Mr. Museveni, who couple of years ago, at the second Russia-Africa summit was giving an example, an illustration of what we’re doing. Well, he said that the world coffee market is valued at some 460 billion dollars, out of which only 2.5 billion dollars remain in Africa. They just grow beans, and the raw beans are being sent to Germany and other countries. when they are friends, you know, and then packed, and so on. So, this is what, in brief, the colonial forms are about, and we would like to promote the movement to resolve this injustice. Without fighting any country, we never want to isolate any country from cooperation, but cooperation must be based on equal footing, just principles, and we once again express our readiness to cooperate with your conference.
