The West is pitching India and China against each other, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said here on Thursday.
Lavrov made the remarks at a meeting of the "Culture without Borders: the Role and Development of Cultural Diplomacy" diplomatic club, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
“Take note of the current developments in the Asia-Pacific region, which the West has started calling the Indo-Pacific region to give its policy a clear anti-China orientation — expecting thereby to additionally clash our great friends and neighbours India and China,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov, who was a vocal critic of the QUAD grouping comprising India, Australia, Japan and the US to contain China, has muted his criticism after the setting up of AUKUS -- a military alliance of Australia, the UK and the US.
The foreign minister said the West is trying to undermine the role of ASEAN in Asia.
“Western colleagues, as in any other part of the world, want to play a major role here, they want to undermine the central role of ASEAN, which suited everyone for many, many decades and was based on the formation of a unifying space by the ASEAN countries and their partners in dialogue both in the field of politics and in the field of military cooperation, in the field of defence,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by TASS.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional grouping of 10 countries in Southeast Asia, aiming to promote economic and security cooperation among its members. The 10 member states are Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
“The rules of consensus, the search for common ground - all this our Western colleagues are beginning to push aside little by little and are trying to lure some ASEAN members into openly confrontational rather than unifying formats: various troikas, quartets,” Lavrov said.
He also called for a collective security arrangement in Eurasia.
“There are no other continents like Eurasia, where so many civilisations coexisted and maintained their identity and relevance in the modern era, and at the same time, Eurasia is the only continent where there is no continent-wide structure. In Eurasia, there is a need for such a unification process so that the interests of many large, truly great powers and civilisations are harmonised,” Lavrov said.
He reminded that in Africa, in addition to sub-regional formats, there is the African Union, in Latin America and the Caribbean, there is the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and in Eurasia there is nothing similar yet.
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