Ukraine war: China calls for all parties to ‘create conditions for peace talks’
- Foreign Minister Qin Gang tells Russian counterpart that Beijing is ready to play a constructive role in restarting negotiations
- Sergey Lavrov calls the meeting ‘timely’ and says relations between the two countries have shown ‘a robust resilience’
“There is no panacea to resolve the Ukraine crisis and all parties should build mutual trust and create conditions for peace talks,” Qin told Sergey Lavrov, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
“China is ready to work with the Russian side to promote high-level … bilateral relations, with the core task being to implement the consensus of the two heads of state [reached in March],” Qin said during the meeting on the sidelines of a conference in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
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The Samarkand meeting came ahead of a four-day visit to Russia by Chinese Defence Minister General Li Shangfu. China’s defence ministry on Friday said Li would travel to Russia on Sunday and hold talks with Russian military officials as well as visit military academies during the trip.
Qin has previously said China was “an advocate for a political solution to the crisis and a promoter of peace talks”. China has never condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Thursday’s meeting was held on the sidelines of a meeting on the situation in Afghanistan attended by the foreign ministers of neighbouring countries Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as well as China and Russia.
Qin also said that China and Russia would “contribute to the multipolarity of the world and the democratisation of international relations”, referring to their goal of making conditions fairer on the global stage.
“The sides will continue to strengthen coordination and cooperation within multilateral structures such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the organisations of BRICS countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa],” Qin said, according to the Chinese statement.
He said they would look into setting up joint free-trade zones as ties grew stronger between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union.
A Russian foreign ministry statement said Lavrov and Qin “highly appreciated the current state of bilateral relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” and “noted a high degree of closeness and coincidence of positions on all the issues discussed”.
Lavrov described the meeting as “timely” and said relations between China and Russia had shown “a robust resilience”.
He said that after last month’s talks between Putin and Xi, efforts must be intensified “across the board on all tracks of our interaction, both for enhancing bilateral cooperation and as regards resolving regional and international problems”.
