Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's comment for the media following a meeting with President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, Nouakchott, February 8, 2023
8 February 2023 17:24
222-08-02-2023
President of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani and I had a long and highly topical conversation, which also included Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the Minister of Foreign Relations, Cooperation and Mauritanians Abroad, as well as presidential aides.
We discussed the state of bilateral relations and agreed to celebrate the upcoming 60th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties. The past period has been full of intensive cooperation in various fields including trade, economic, humanitarian, education and foreign policy cooperation.
We have a common understanding of the need to expand economic ties and direct contacts between our businesses. In this context, Mauritanian businesses are interested in participating in the Russia-Africa Business Forum, which will be followed by the second Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg at the end of July.
Bilateral cooperation has always included marine harvesting. Under the Agreement on Cooperation in Marine Fisheries, Russian seiners can operate in Mauritania's exclusive economic zone. We are grateful to our friends for their consistent positive attitude towards this operation and for the promise to continue to create favourable conditions for Russian fishermen.
We would like to diversify our ties and extend them to other areas, primarily mining and healthcare. Since Soviet times, we have had a good tradition of training personnel for medical institutions in Mauritania, including visits by Russian doctors to assist their colleagues locally.
Fifteen hundred Mauritanian citizens have been educated in our country; many of them now hold high-responsibility positions in the Mauritanian government and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as in the economic sphere. We are pleased that their experience and knowledge are appreciated in Mauritania.
We have a shared opinion on international affairs concerning the need to intensify efforts to support international law and the principles in the UN Charter. This is definitely an area for further coordination between our two countries.
We talked about the problems on the African continent. Like our Mauritanian colleagues, we are concerned about the growing tension in the Sahara-Sahel region, where countries need to combine efforts to more effectively combat terrorist manifestations, which are, if anything, growing. We discussed the Western Sahara settlement. Russia used to be a member of the Group of Friends of Western Sahara where we were preparing specific steps to implement the existing decisions of the UN Security Council. But this issue has been put on hold. We believe we need to return to an active search for specific solutions to take this situation out of the impasse and to promote a settlement on the basis of existing UN Security Council decisions.
We could not ignore the general geopolitical situation, the crisis that the West is purposefully creating after failing to use Ukraine to inflict a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation, as the West puts it.
We have detailed the genesis of this crisis and described Russia's actions to prevent the undermining of the system of international relations based on the UN Charter. We also shared information about the steps Russia is taking to prevent the collapse of global energy and food security. This obvious risk was created by the absolutely illegitimate, illegal unilateral actions the United States and its satellites are pursuing.
We discussed preparations for the second Russia-Africa Summit, to be held on July 27-29 in St Petersburg. Mr President attended the first edition of this summit in the autumn of 2019 in Sochi and has confirmed his intention to take advantage of President Vladimir Putin's invitation to come to the next summit in St Petersburg at the end of July.
We are grateful to our Mauritanian friends for their excellent hospitality. I invited my colleague to pay a return visit to the Russian Federation at any convenient time.
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