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Untitled Document Speech by Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Igor Ivanov at MGIMO(U) on the Occasion of the Beginning of an Academic Year (excerpted) Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Daily News Bulletin September 1, 2003
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It is perfectly clear that the upcoming political year promises to be a year rich in events and far from ordinary. The world community has a whole array of problems before it that demand an urgent and adequate solution. The chief of them is to determine a contemporary world pattern model for the coming years and decades which would meet the interests of all states and peoples - big and small - and would open prospects for broad cooperation in the interests of a stable and secure evolution of the situation in the world.
Recent events, and primarily the Iraq crisis, have most acutely demonstrated that the current transitional stage of world development from the Cold War era to a new world order has become impermissibly protracted. As a result, the situation has developed that is characterized by permanent instability. It is hard to recall in contemporary history another period when so many unresolved regional problems would simultaneously exist in the world, really threatening international stability. And if we add to this such threats as terrorism, separatism and other forms of extremism, the danger of the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles, drug trafficking and organized crime, then it becomes evident that the priority task of the international community is to create a new world order which would ensure stability and security on the global level, would help neutralize the present challenges and would not allow new ones to appear.
In all these processes Russia will continue to play the most active, initiative-laden role. At the top of the list we, of course, put our national interests. It is fundamentally important for us to secure external conditions that would reliably guarantee security and prosperity for our citizens and would facilitate the economic and social development of our country. Simultaneously we are perfectly aware that to achieve this goal is only possible if Russia together with other states can work out the basic principles on which to build interstate relations at this stage. And here in the new and democratic Russia the international community has a reliable, predictable and responsible partner open for dialogue and the search of mutually acceptable solutions on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations and of the principles of international law.
In our deep conviction, the international community is quite able to build a democratic world order under which each state would bear its share of responsibility for the future of mankind, and the world community, in its turn, would protect the foundations of international law and the lawful interests of each of its members. In other words: prosperity and security through international cooperation with the preservation of national distinctiveness - this is our principle.
In this we see also the principal meaning of the concept of multipolarity in the era of globalization. For us, a multipolar world is the close cooperation of all the major world centers on the basis of equality, democracy and constructive partnership. The events of the last few years have borne out with particular clarity that when we - I mean the world community - are together, then we can cope with even the most complicated of tasks. But when we are disunited, then it becomes for us considerably more difficult to fight the present-day threats and challenges as well.
All this dictates the need to further strengthen the multilateral institutions and, primarily, the central and coordinating role of the United Nations and of its Security Council. It is the United Nations that can act as the pivotal structure of contemporary international life and a guarantor for the immutability of the fundamental principles of international law. It is the United Nations that can become the main center for developing a world development strategy. Of course, this requires the combined will of the member states of this world organization. As to Russia, we have that will. The upcoming participation of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin in the opening session of the UN General Assembly is a striking testimony to this.
In this connection I would like to especially stress that in our position in favor of the idea of multipolarity and multilateral diplomacy - and, by the way, this position is shared by the overwhelming majority of states of the world - there are no elements of confrontationism or rivalry at all; on the contrary, we are sincerely interested in close collaboration with all our partners and, moreover, without such broad-based cooperation we did not even think of the construction of the world order towards which we are striving.
This fully applies to our relationship with the United States. Active preparation is now under way for the next Russian-American summit meeting in Washington, before which only a few days remain. We firmly expect the upcoming talks of the Presidents of Russia and the US to become a new landmark in the constructive partnership between our countries. Stability and predictability in the world to this day largely depend on the degree of collaboration between Russia and the United States on the world scene. We, for our part, are ready for such cooperation and have proved this in practice, be it in the elaboration of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty or within the international antiterrorist coalition, including in Afghanistan, although a great deal, of course, has still to be jointly done and, above all, this applies to the area of security. But neither should we forget about the other fields of cooperation, in particular, about the need to strengthen trade and economic ties between our countries, and to remove the obstacles for the development of people-to-people contacts.
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