Speech of the Ambassador at Large of the Foreign Ministry of Russia V.V. Popov at the third meeting of Group of strategic vision “Russia – Islamic World” that took place in Istanbul on 1-2 February 2007.
Dear chairmen,
First of all, let me express my deep gratitude to our Turkish hosts for organizing the meeting.
1. I would like to offer to all Group Members to discuss at our future meetings, which we intend to carry out in Jordan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the idea of a new definition of the principles of partnership of civilizations. The fact is that now the so-called dialogue of civilizations is in crisis. This was said by many leaders, including leaders from Islamic world, in particular the President of Egypt H. Mubarak was talking about it recently.
There are two main problems.
Firstly, at many conferences all together criticize the theory of Samuel Huntington, and here there is a mutual understanding, but it is not going further. Secondly, at such meetings the representatives of Western countries, in fact, are trying to impose their values on Muslims. Therefore, the coefficient of efficiency of a lot of seminars is small.
We would like to propose to develop new principles of really equitable and mutually respectful dialogue between different cultures. They are as follows.
Firstly, there must be a statement of fact that there are no higher and lower civilizations. All are equal; all have made a historic contribution to the treasury of human culture.
Second, today’s war in Lebanon and the occupation of Iraq show that political problems cannot be solved by force; we need new compromise approaches that will gradually help find a way out of this situation.
Third, it has not been said accidentally that new it is well forgotten old. In 1928, the French Foreign Minister and the US Secretary of State signed an agreement, which entered the history as the Pact Briand – Kellogg. It stated the refusal of war as means of settling international disputes and as an instrument of national policy. The pact was signed by more than 50 countries, including the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the Second World War did not allow implement it in its entirety. However, maybe it is time to return to this idea.
Probably one of the principles of a new form of partnership among civilizations would be the idea of transfer by the developed countries of new drugs to developing countries, in particular for AIDS, cancer and other diseases free of charge.
I hope that the esteemed members of the Group will give their views on this matter.
2. The representative of Russia in our Group, President Shaimiev, has informed about our readiness to participate actively in the creation of a fund for the implementation of the three projects. I hope that other members will also follow this example, of course, in the best of their ability. Maybe we will seek the assistance of some Muslim funds to collect the necessary sum for a worthy and full realization of our plans.