Ladies and gentlemen,
My colleague and good friend – Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood Albusaidi and I held substantive talks, in part, to develop yesterday’s ministerial meeting of the strategic dialogue between Russia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). We reiterated our commitments to the resolutions adopted and expressed in the joint statement by the ministers of Russia and the six Gulf states and as a joint plan of action for the next five years. We noted the Sultanate of Oman’s special role as the current GCC chair in achieving these results, organising the talks, and facilitating consensus, with generally acceptable formulations in all aspects of Russia-GCC relations and all areas for coordinating our actions on regional and international issues.
Many problems require concerted efforts, in part, by Russia and our Arab friends. I am referring to the need to ensure security in the Gulf (now that Saudi Arabia has normalised its relations with Iran and other Arab countries are also moving in the same direction) and the work on the settlement in Yemen. These issues have special importance in creating conditions for resolving humanitarian and economic problems, facilitating the return of refugees to the Syrian Arab Republic and promoting progress in the political settlement. There has been progress in this respect, primarily Syria’s return to the Arab League, which was reaffirmed at the May summit in Jeddah. There are also other issues of high interest in the region.
As you know, yesterday we paid special attention to the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian settlement. This has fallen into a deep deadlock. We need to focus on this situation and make a special effort to overcome the current stalemate. Our Arab friends have a number of ideas in this respect. Russia has expressed several initiatives as well. A number of other states are also interested in finding a way to resume talks between Palestine and Israel and in moving towards the full-scale implementation of the UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative on creating an independent Palestinian state that can live in peace and security with neighbouring Israel as well as with the other states in the region. We are not seeing this kind of progress right now. On the contrary, attempts are being made to forget about these UN resolutions and actually just let things drift. This is unacceptable, and we are in full solidarity with our Omani and other Arab friends on this problem as well as on the majority of other issues.
I would like to make a special mention of the role of Oman, a country that has a positive impact as a mediator in many cases where there is a need for a trust-based and low-profile dialogue that is seeking to create an atmosphere of trust. We appreciate this role of Oman, as do other countries that seek these services.
Today, we focused on bilateral matters, reviewed all aspects of our interaction, noted the traditionally trust-based political dialogue at the highest and high levels, and agreed to maintain it. There are plans to supplement our political dialogue with a dialogue between the two countries’ members of parliament.
Specific ideas like this are being looked into and they will become a reality before long. I am happy to say that after the short period during the COVID-19 pandemic during which trade between our two countries declined, we saw an upwards curve prevail last year, securing growth in trade of more than 45 percent. The first four months of this year showed even stronger growth in trade – over 50 percent. We share the opinion that this trend has to be maintained. The figures are increasing and they have reached considerable levels but, of course, potential for our economic interaction is much bigger.
Today, we discussed the possibility of moving more quickly towards considering the issue of setting up an intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation. Our Omani friends attach special importance to interaction in ensuring food and energy security. They have developed relevant plans. We will be glad to help facilitate their execution.
We reaffirmed our commitment to continue interaction within OPEC+, including the fulfilment of the agreements reached in this format. We discussed cultural, education and similar exchange [programmes], which also have good prospects. In particular, there is interest in organising tours for Russian performers and, probably, ambitious Russian Seasons tours in Oman. Interest has been shown in holding exhibitions to display items from our leading museums in Oman.
I believe relations between our two countries are on the rise. I expect additional decisions to be taken soon to ease the visa procedure to help facilitate tourism and business contacts for the sake of broader and more concrete interaction.
I want to thank Mr Minister yet again for the meeting and for the talks, and ask him to take the floor.
Question: In the past 15 years, Oman has been working hard to create a modern reliable base for investment, especially in the Duqm industrial zone, but the level of Russian investment does not match that of bilateral friendly relations. What is preventing this development in your opinion?
Sergey Lavrov: I agree that the potential for economic cooperation is much higher than the current figures. That said, the current figures are impressive in some ways. As of today, this total is already over half a billion dollars, but, yes, this is far from the limit – our potential is much greater. We are doing all we can to encourage our companies that work in the region to work in Oman, using the opportunities of the Special Economic Zone at Duqm and the Port of Salalah free zone.
Literally just before the end of our talks, we mentioned the interest of several Russian investors in developing fertiliser processing and implementing water management projects in Oman. Our companies are interested in developing chemical and fertiliser processing with a view to fully meeting the demand of the market in the Sultanate of Oman and exporting these to the countries of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. We submitted this plan for consideration by our Omani friends and we hope for a positive response.
Our businesspeople are also discussing other proposals. A delegation of Omani businesspeople attended the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg in June of this year. Another Omani delegation took part in the recent Russia-Islamic World Forum in Kazan. It included businesspeople and government officials.
I am confident that we need to make the highest possible use of the opportunities offered by our economies to each other. We are realists and we know that those that imagine themselves to be the masters of the fate of the world are doing all they can to prevent this. We know what unseemly methods the US-led countries of the collective West are using – they are simply demanding that the countries of the global south and the global east should suspend all contact with the Russian Federation. This conduct shows a lack of integrity and the inability to behave properly in society – in this case, in the international community. They are convinced that they can still use colonial methods and dictate to everyone how to behave and still continue trying to live at the expense of others. During yesterday’s meeting with the ministers of the Arab Gulf states and today’s bilateral meetings, I became convinced in that Arab countries have their own vision of the world. They are not prone to unequivocally support any side and always favour a search for compromise. They want to ensure a balance of interests and do not favour pressure against sovereign states. Non-interference in domestic affairs is one of the first principles of the UN Charter and should be respected like any other principle of this document without exception. Let us not forget about principles like the sovereign equality of states, which is not respected by any US ally or, of course, by the US itself. All of their international actions demonstrate complete lack of respect for the principle of equality of other states as regards the West. This kind of pressure has no future. It is merely exposing the organisers of such campaigns, which are out to prevent the creation of an equitable multipolar world system and preserve their hegemony. These goals contradict the objective course of history. These goals will not be reached, and a multipolar world will become a reality. The Arab countries, notably the Gulf Cooperation Council, will become one of the obvious centres of this world order.
Question: What do you think about the visions and priorities of security in the Gulf after the reconciliation and resumption of diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran?
Sergey Lavrov: Russia is interested in normalisation in the Gulf area. For many years, we have been promoting our initiatives and submitting them for discussion by our colleagues and friends, and we took account of their comments. In the past couple of years, we gathered analysts and political scientists from the Arab countries and Iran. They are positive about our efforts and made many useful remarks. Our activity may help create conditions for the final practical resolution of security issues in the Gulf because the coastal countries need to reach agreements themselves.
The resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which was formalised in the People’s Republic of China, is an important step towards creating the necessary conditions, and our Omani friends facilitated this event. Much still has to be done, including complete unconditional normalisation of relations between all Arab states and the Islamic Republic of Iran. After this, it will be necessary to take additional measures for building mutual trust and ensuring transparency in security issues. Cooperation on these issues would be ideal. Many problems still require the attention of the coastal states and all those that sincerely wish to help them find these solutions. Russia is one of these countries. We will do all we can to help our friends.
Question: What steps is Russia taking in light of possible NATO membership of new countries such as Ukraine and Sweden?
Sergey Lavrov: We are taking the appropriate and proactive steps. We were stunned by the speed with which both Finland, which has already joined NATO, and Sweden, which is being actively and forcibly implicated in the process that will remove the existing obstacles to this path, gave up their neutral status and its advantages which ensured their relatively independent role, reputation and high standing in Europe and the international arena. These countries have forgone special trade, economic and investment advantages in their relations with the Russian Federation. The speed with which it all happened makes one look for a reason in the completely subordinate position in which the United States and the rest of the collective West have put these countries.
The national interests of the Finnish and Swedish states were sacrificed to the need to unite the entire West in the fight, in this case, against Russia, by turning Ukraine into another neo-Nazi tool targeted at our country with the sole purpose of preventing any kind of challenge to the goal set by the United States, namely, to ensure the hegemony of the West forever and to continue to provide for its quality of life by using the colonial approach of living at someone else's expense.
Again, Finland and Sweden enjoyed very different reputations, but apparently the instincts developed during the time of the emergence of Nazism in Europe and the Cold War were not buried too deeply. As soon as the command was issued for everyone to line up against Russia, they dutifully fell in line. Sadly, this is the choice of the governments that were voted in by their constituents. So, it is up to the people of a particular country to decide whether this is in the interests of the two countries. Without a doubt, we will draw the appropriate conclusions based on how quickly and deeply NATO develops these territories. There is no doubt that they are going to do so. Helsinki and Stockholm are already discussing with the United States many issues related to the deployment of NATO infrastructure at the borders of the Russian Federation (in the case Finland) and very close to our borders (in the case of Sweden). I assure you that Russia’s legitimate security interests will be ensured. We are know what these measures will be and how to put them into practice.
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