At UN, Russia urges international cooperation in global financial reform

Russia called today for greater international cooperation to ensure better management of the global economic and financial systems, telling the United Nations that the Group of 20 developed and emerging economies can play a key role in carrying out the required changes.

“It is important to finalize the process of reforming the global financial and economic architecture, and to implement all that we have agreed on rather than to stop half way,” Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, told the annual general debate of the General Assembly in New York.

He said the efficiency of the reform effort will grow if the G-20 strengthened its dialogue with the UN and its specialized agencies. A significant contribution to the reform effort is being made by the group of countries known sometimes as BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

“BRICS does not aim at confrontation with anyone – its goal is to enhance productive multilateral collaboration to address the problems of the contemporary world,” said Mr. Lavrov.

On the deployment of strategic missile defence systems in various parts of the world, he said that erecting such weaponry altered the overall configuration of international security and called for legally binding guarantees that the stationing of the missiles would not disrupt global and regional balances.

“This equally holds true of both Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, where ballistic missile defence in becoming a factor that affects the strategic environment.”

Russia saw no alternative to political and diplomatic settlement of the nuclear issues in Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the foreign minister said, calling for “concrete steps” to create conditions for the resumption of talks. “We call on partners to address these tasks with utmost responsibility.”

Mr. Lavrov stated that with the emergence of new telecommunications technologies, international information security is becoming increasingly challenged and he called for a coordinated global effort to tackle the problem.