OREANDA-NEWS. Russia intends to draw special attention to solving the problems of the African continent during its presidency of the UN Security Council in September this year. This was announced on Monday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a joint press conference following talks with his Angolan counterpart Manuel Domingos Augusta.

"Russia in September this year, next month, will chair the UN Security Council, and one of our key events is planned on the problems of assisting Africans in solving their problems in the sphere of crises, conflicts and other situations", he said.

“It should be emphasized that on such an acute issue as the need for UN Security Council reform, Russia firmly stands for reaching the widest possible agreement with priority attention to overcoming the main defect of the current composition of the UN Security Council - the underrepresentation of developing countries”, continued Lavrov. “Any reform of the UN Security Council should have as its main goal the increase in the representation of Asia, Latin America and the African continent”.

The Russian Foreign Minister also drew attention to the fact that "the cooperation of African states with the BRICS association (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is an important area of ​​modern international relations". "We agreed that we will continue the practice that began in 2018, when representatives of leading subregional African organizations attended the BRICS summit", he added.

In turn, the Angolan Foreign Minister expressed gratitude to Russia for supporting the idea of ​​more active participation of African countries in the main UN body. "We note the importance of Russia's position on UN reform. We would like to emphasize that we also want Africa to be more represented in the Security Council. At the upcoming UNGA session, we intend to support Russia's position", Augushtu said.