Philippinen (die Republik der Philippinen)
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s opening remarks during talks with President of the Senate of the Philippines Franklin M. Drilon, Moscow, October 19, 2015
Mr President of the Senate of the Philippines,
Friends!
Welcome to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We are aware that you have a busy programme, including a meeting with Chairperson of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Senate and the Federation Council, as well as meetings with the State Duma leaders and legislators in St Petersburg.
The Philippines is our promising partner in Southeast Asia. Sound prospects have been created during meetings between our respective presidents and their contact persons on the sidelines of various forums. We can see opportunities to promote our political, trade, economic, investment, and humanitarian cooperation. We note and welcome the interest in the Philippines towards studying the Russian language, which we make every effort to promote.
Important meetings are scheduled to be held in the Philippines and Russia, during which our leaders will have an opportunity to talk again. President Putin has accepted the invitation extended by President of the Philippines Benigno Aquino III to take part in the APEC summit in Manila in November. We highly appreciate the energetic work of the Filipino presidency to ensure that the upcoming APEC summit in the Philippines is a success and results in specific decisions, which will contribute to normalising the global economic and financial situation, and promote the previously agreed goals concerning IMF reforms.
Promoting various forms of regional integration is high on today’s agenda. We advocate for all of these processes to be open and not based on blocs, but rather the universal nature of the global trading system. We are, in general, supportive of the proposal by the Philippines to hold a bilateral meeting of our presidents during the APEC summit, on its sidelines. I’m confident that the upcoming meeting of our leaders and your current visit to Russia will be instrumental in preparing important, specific decisions that will be worthy of the 40th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between our countries to be marked in 2016.
The 20th anniversary of Russia-ASEAN dialogue partnership will be celebrated in 2016 as well. We are grateful to all ASEAN members, in particular the Republic of the Philippines, for agreeing to accept Russia’s initiative to mark this event by organising a Russia-ASEAN summit, which we have proposed to host in Russia in the spring of 2016. Thank you for supporting this proposal.
Once again, welcome to Russia, Mr Drilon.
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In response to safety concerns expressed by Franklin Drilon regarding possible conflicts in connection with 10 million Filipinos residing outside the Philippines, the Russian Foreign Minister had the following to say.
Sergey Lavrov: We can relate to what you just said, Mr President, because 25 million Russians, who identify themselves with Russian culture, the Russian past, Russian history and Russian present, live outside this country. Unfortunately, they are occasionally persecuted for their loyalty to Russian culture, history, language and traditions, as happened in our neighbouring sister country of Ukraine, where nationalists came to power after a coup and launched an offensive on everything that is Russian. That’s how this bloody conflict began.
We will be willing to apprise you of our efforts to make sure that not a single member of any diaspora anywhere in the world feels harassed.