Lavrov claims US Indo-Pacific agreements undermine ASEAN structures

MOSCOW, Oct 2 (EFE) — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov acknowledged today that US alliances in the Indo-Pacific region undermine long-standing cooperation models sponsored by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“One of the hottest trends right now are the so-called Indo-Pacific Strategies, which were invented by the US and embodied by the Four Quads (USA, Japan, India, Australia) and, more recently, by AUKUS (US), Australia and United Kingdom),” he told the Defense and Foreign Policy Council.
“All of this is aimed at destroying the universal forms in the Asia-Pacific that have existed under ASEAN’s auspices for decades,” he stressed.
These “universal” formats, such as the ASEAN Security Forum, meetings of ASEAN Defense Ministers and other partners, called ASEAN+, are based on the “principle of consensus” and include “all major countries in the region without exception”. .
In Lavrov’s view, the concept of Indo-Pacific formulated by the US “aimed at the collapse of a system that was based on the need to respect the indivisibility of security.