Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, I want to express my gratitude to all of you. It has become a good tradition to have such meetings on the sidelines of the General Assembly. I believe it is important, in addition to bilateral contacts, which take place in other formats.

I remember vividly my visit to Fiji. Last year the APEC Leaders’ Meeting was held in Port Moresby, during which the head of our delegation, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and ministers of the economic bloc met with our friends from Papua New Guinea (PNG). We are looking forward to Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape’s visit to Russia. Last year, President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands Hilda Heine visited Russia. This year we received a parliamentary delegation from Fiji.

We want to expand contacts between foreign ministries. We are getting ready to receive Foreign Minister of Vanuatu Ralph Regenvanu in Moscow. We are also preparing for consultations with the Foreign Ministry of Fiji.

Quite a number of your citizens are studying at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in short-term courses, which allows them to learn from our experience. At the moment, representatives of Kiribati, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau are studying at the Diplomatic Academy.

Considering that the mutual diplomatic presence at the level of embassies in each other’s countries is not so extensive, we are taking advantage of the honourary consulate institute. Honorary consuls from Samoa and Palau are working in Russia, as well as a consul from Fiji (with a residence in Tokyo). We would be very interested in having a Fiji representative in Russia. On our part, Russia’s honourary consuls are present in Vanuatu, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Fiji. I think we should expand this practice.