During a meeting today with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “BRICS member states intend to negotiate the criteria and principles of potential expansion of the association shortly,” according to Tass.
Lavrov noted that “the interest in this global association is quite high and continues to grow.” In addition to Algeria, Argentina, and Iran, “there are more than a dozen of such states” that would like to join BRICS, said Lavrov.
“Before we talk about how and when the BRICS expansion begins exactly, we have agreed to negotiate the criteria and principles of reviewing this kind of application between the five member states,” Lavrov noted. “Considering that we already receive official applications, we expect, of course, that the negotiations of the criteria and principles will not take too long. We must first understand how this association will develop in its potential expanded membership.”
