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News > Russia

Russian Ministers Meet With Italian Counterparts in Rome

  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gives a speech during a meeting with non-governmental organizations held in Moscow, Russia, 2014.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gives a speech during a meeting with non-governmental organizations held in Moscow, Russia, 2014. | Photo: EFE

Published 18 February 2020
Opinion

During the meeting, the ministers will discuss a series of urgent bilateral and regional issues.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will meet this Tuesday in Rome with their Italian counterparts, Luigi Di Maio and Lorenzo Guerini, to discuss a series of urgent bilateral and regional issues, such as the dangerous confrontation between the United States and Iran.

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One of the main issues the ministers will address at the meeting will be the conflict between the United States and Iran.  In that regard, the Russian Foreign Minister had recently made it clear that his nation was in favor of overcoming the differences between those countries only through dialogue at the negotiations table. 

"Unlike the conflictive patterns promoted by different states, Russia proposes a constructive and unifying agenda for the region. We are convinced that consistent implementation of this initiative would be an important step towards remedying the situation throughout the Middle East and would lay the foundations for a structure of mutual trust," Lavrov added on Monday during an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa.

This ministerial meeting, in the 2+2 format, the fourth to be held by the leaders of the two countries in seven years, will also be a "good opportunity to assess the issues of arms control and strategic stability," Lavrov said.

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry recently added in a statement that security in Europe, regional crises and Russian-Italian military and technical cooperation will be other priority issues at Tuesday's meeting, with emphasis on the situation in Libya and Syria.

Lavrov told La Stampa that the meeting also plans to evaluate measures to end the crises that these countries are facing.

"The European Union's intention to guarantee Libya's territorial integrity is not entirely clear to me. It is up to the Libyans themselves to act as guarantors in this regard, while the task of the international community is to help them create the necessary conditions, aware that only the UN Security Council can provide universal guarantees. For our part, we intend to work in this direction," he stressed.

At the beginning of February, Sergei Lavrov made an official tour of Latin American countries, including Venezuela and Cuba.

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