After four days of deliberation, the first Russia-Latin America International Parliamentary Conference ended yesterday on an upbeat note with an announcement by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, that this very successful event will now take place annually. The idea is to model it on the format of Russia’s relationship with African nations and the Russia-Africa summit that takes place annually in St. Petersburg. At a plenary session yesterday, he reported that 200-300 people attended, including representatives from 19 countries. As Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov noted, Washington and “other capitals” are likely not happy about the success of this conference and “have taken note of it,” TASS reported him saying.
Relations between Russia and the nations of Ibero-America and the Caribbean are long-standing, dating back to the early 19th-Century battles for independence from Spain, Volodin noted, and Russia always supported their struggle against colonialism. He invited the parliamentarians to return to Moscow for a conference next year “to discuss the development of our relations and the building of a multipolar and just world order.” Interparliamentary cooperation is essential, he said, both for building the new multipolar world and for combating sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies on tens of nations.
Aside from President Vladimir Putin’s remarks to the opening session on Sept. 29, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered a video address emphasizing the growing ties of cooperation between Russia and the Latin America-Caribbean region. The great changes taking place in world politics are reflected in the composition of the participants and agenda of the conference, he said. “We are not only witnessing the formation of a more equitable multipolar architecture of international relations but are also directly participating in this process. An integral part of this is the increased role of the Latin American and Caribbean states and associations in world affairs. Their voices are becoming louder, and their words are carrying more weight.” He reported that he was particularly pleased that Argentina, “one of the leading countries of South America,” was invited to become a member of the BRICS at the Aug. 22-24 Johannesburg summit.
