The head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi spoke on Thursday on the sidelines of the meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Vientiane.
The annual meeting of ten ASEAN member countries opened Thursday in the capital of Laos and is scheduled to last three days.
MM. Lavrov and Wang spoke on the sidelines of the event, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The two men were to meet for a 40-minute “ministerial meeting”, according to a program previously consulted by AFP.
They were seen by AFP journalists upon their arrival at the conference center where the regional meeting was being held, and Mr. Lavrov left the premises at 7:15 p.m. local time (2:15 p.m. BST) without discussing the content of the interviews.
The meeting between the heads of Russian and Chinese diplomacy was held the day after Wang Yi received his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kouleba in China, knowing that Beijing is a close ally of Moscow and that NATO members consider China as a “decisive facilitator” of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Before speaking with Mr. Wang, Sergei Lavrov said that ASEAN was “one of the essential elements for a new and fairer multipolar order.” The entity must “guarantee stable and secure development of the Asia-Pacific region, outside the blocs”.
The foreign ministers of Canada, India and the United Kingdom also arrived in Vientiane on Thursday to participate in the talks as dialogue partners, AFP noted.
The head of American diplomacy Anthony Blinken is expected for his part on Saturday in the Laotian capital.
This article is originally published on .rtl.be
