SCO Countries Agree on Need to Use National Currencies in Mutual Payments: Lavrov
14:04 05.05.2023 (Updated: 10:48 03.08.2023)
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On 4 and 5 May, Lavrov took part in a summit for foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), being held in the Indian state of Goa. The key topic of the gathering is expansion of the organization with Iran and Belarus being two possible new members.
The member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) have a clear understanding of the need to use national currencies in mutual payments more actively, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said said during a press conference after the meeting of the foreign ministers of the SCO.
"There is an understanding of the increasing use of national currencies in payments between SCO members," Lavrov told reporters on the sidelines of the SCO ministerial meeting in India.
There are practices being developed by the Eurasian Development Bank, the Asian Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the new BRICS Development Bank that can be used for this purpose, the top Russian diplomat added.
Payments in national currencies among the SCO member states have been recently on the organisation's agenda.
In December 2022, the SCO Interbank Consortium held a meeting in New Delhi, where the increase of national currencies in mutual settlements was discussed, among other things.
In April 2023, SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming urged member states to increase the share of national currencies in mutual payments.
Talking about other results of the meeting, Lavrov said that several Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers condemned the recent drone attack on Kremlin.
On Tuesday night, two drones attempted to strike the Kremlin in Moscow, but they were disabled. Russia accused the Ukrainian government of being behind the attack, but Kiev denied this. There were no casualties as a result of the incident.
According to the minister, Kiev's and Washington's of their involvement in the attack on the Kremlin does not mean that they can be believed.
"If you believe that because the United States and Ukraine have rejected the accusations, we should stop thinking about what we know, then this will not work," he said.
The Russian Foreign Minister said that Moscow will not think about whether the drones attack on the Kremlin was a casus belli, a just cause for war, but respond with concrete actions.
"I wouldn't think about the name or the terms here either. It was clearly a hostile act, it is quite clear that the Kiev terrorists could not have committed it behind their masters’ back. We will respond not by talking about whether it is a casus belli or not, but by concrete actions. We have a lot of patience - as the saying goes, 'Russians take a long time to harness,' and so on," Lavrov noted.
Moscow has never refused to negotiate on Ukraine, despite Kiev being inundated with US weapons, but the settlement issue does not depend only on the line of contact, it is more global, Lavrov noted.
"We have never refused to settle the problems that arose because the United States and its satellites decided to pump Ukraine with weapons to confront Russia," he said.
Lavrov also said that the Ukraine crisis is impossible to resolve while the West upholds its global dominance.
"Without solving the main geopolitical problem, which is the West’s desire to preserve its hegemony, to dictate to everyone and everything its will, it is impossible to resolve any crises either in Ukraine or in other parts of the world," Lavrov said.
He also noted that setting the Donbass frontline in stone cannot be a solution to the ongoing conflict, as the issue is more complex.
"We see a growing understanding that these problems cannot be reconciled only by settling on the line of contact in Donbass, as some want to freeze that line and then begin to think about how to live afterwards," the minister said, since, as the issue is global it needs to be solved without the West's "diktat".
