Lavrov: Russia, U.S. need more trade, mutual investment
MOSCOW. Nov 13 (Interfax) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for boosting trade between Russia and the United States and for more extensive mutual investment.
“Russia and the United States possess all the necessary resources for more extensive collaboration in countering modern threats and challenges and in trying to settle regional crises and conflicts. I am convinced that our countries can and should make comprehensive use of available potentials for enlarging volumes of trade and investment and for stepping up contacts between people,” Lavrov said in a message to an international conference on changes in perceptions of Russia in the United States and of the United States in Russia over the past eight decades.
The conference is an event marking the 80th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Washington.
“It is a tradition that an important role in this process belongs to scholarly communities, whose activities help build a climate of confidence in Russian-American relations,” Lavrov said in his message, whose text is posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
“On November 16, 1933, not only was a line drawn under quite a difficult period in the history of our relations but a new phase was ushered into cooperation between the two great powers, which play an extremely important role in global development,” he said.
“The principles of dialogue between nations that are based on non-interference in internal affairs and mutual respect for sovereignty and that were proclaimed in those days helped in subsequent years to find common language and solve the most complex of problems despite intense contradictions and deep ideological differences. They formed the foundations of the Soviet-American alliance during World War II, were the basis for safeguarding peace during the Cold War, and have made it possible to sustain global stability thereafter,” the minister said.
[featured image is file photo from past occasion]