Rhodes Forum - World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations"

Alexander Saltanov - Deputy Minister, Foreign Affairs or the Russian Federation (Russia)

Esteemed participants of the Forum,

In addition to what S.V. Lavrov has noted in his greeting, I would like to say that your Forum is of special significance at this particular moment. As our President D.A. Medvedev said in his recent speech in Yaroslavl, at the Modern State and Global Security Conference, ‘politics is becoming an increasingly complex and science-intensive process’. To address new challenges of the times it is necessary to concentrate intellectual resources in the key areas to the greatest extent possible. It is not only that domination of one or several superpowers is a thing of the past – one or several intellectual centres can hold sway no longer. Future belongs to such flexible instruments, that help to understand the quickly changing reality and make recommendations, as your Forum which is attended by intellectuals, politicians, and public figures from several dozen countries.

Those challenges of the times, especially in the area of international relations, which I am particularly interested in, are manifold. Besides the global financial crisis, stability in the world is menaced, like in the past, by regional and local conflicts, terrorism, trans-border crime, food shortage and climate change.

These complex problems must be resolved in such a way as to preserve all the best that humanity has produced and, at the same time, to develop new mechanisms which would help to preserve global peace and bring about conditions for sustainable development.

Today it has become clear that the UN is what we all have in common. This is a life and time-tested mechanism, called upon to harmonize the interests of different states and peoples. Despite all the criticism, sometimes very harsh, including the one expressed at the latest UN General Assembly in New-York, it is evident that the UN should be not destroyed, but improved, by adapting it to new global realities, preserving its inter-state nature and inviolability of its Charter. The UN has no counterparts. It is the UN which serves as a source of the international law and it should retain this capacity.

It is a different matter that at the same time the old and new structures and formats are taking rise. They certainly cannot replace the UN, but may effectively contribute to performing both global and regional tasks. These mechanisms should be strengthened, as they allow to pool joint efforts to react to common threats, to mitigate the aftermath of crises and to increase sustainability of national economies. Generally speaking, such organizations contribute to further advance of democracy in the international relations. Can the civilization criteria serve as the foundation for such organizations – that’s one of the most interesting issues to be discussed at our Forum.

A paradoxical situation has now cropped in the world. We have to look for the formulae to solve the problems, relevant for today and tomorrow, such as promotion of multilateral disarmament, creation of WMD-free and WMD delivery-vehicle-free zones, including in the Middle East, providing of energy security. But we are pushed back by the legacy of the Cold War and the correspondent outline of interaction between different military and political blocks and structures, left from that time.

I mean, first of all, absence of a collective security system in Europe, which is still home to NATO, a system, which would correspond to the spirit of the time and the countries’ needs. At the same time we have a whole litany of conflicts in the Middle East.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, the most essential of them, has long become outdated. Either peoples, or the states of the region don’t need it. The fact that it is not settled yet impedes the long-standing integration processes in the region, at the same time causing extremism and terrorism, as well as the risks of inter-civilization clashes.

Thank you for your attention.