Kirill Barsky: We Must Bring People of the Six Friendly Nations Together

For a regional organization, a strong public support,protracted ties between NGOs, wide contacts between rank-and-file people havegrowing significance. We must bring people of the six friendly nationstogether.

Reporter：Li Yuheng

Reporter: According to the recent ‘Jane’s Defense Weekly’,the Russian defense spending will increase by 40% in the next three years.President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia has strengthened cooperation between themilitary forces of the two countries. Will the two countries cooperate indefense research?

Kirill Barsky: Your question refers to bilateral cooperationbetween Russia and China which I am not in a position to comment on in detail.I can only say that the Russian-Chinese relations have reached a very highlevel of strategic partnership, and the successful visit of President XiJinping to Russia last March tangibly contributed to the enhancement ofcollaboration in all spheres including military cooperation.

As tocooperation between defense ministries of the SCO Member-States,it is part and parcel of security cooperation within theorganization. It includes annual ministerial meetings, regular consultations of seniordefense officials,andjoint military exercises.Plans for the future were discussedat the Meeting of Ministers of Defense held on June 26, 2013 in Bishkek,Kyrgyzstan. The six countries top brass adopted a Joint Communique and signed aPlan of Cooperation between the Ministries of Defense of the SCO Member-Statesfor2014-2015. They also reached an agreement that the next “Peace Mission - 2014” SCOmilitary exercises will take place in 2014 in China.

Havingsaid that, I would like to stress one point. The SCO is not a defense alliance,and military cooperation in its framework is strictly limited tocounter-terrorism.

Reporter: In 2014, Russia will assume the rotating presidency ofthe SCO. Once you said the characteristics of the serious internationalsituation facing SCO are terrorism, separatism, drug trafficking and otherforms of transnational crime. What region will the SCO focus on in terms ofsecurity in the future?

Kirill Barsky: As the SCO presidency in 2014-2015, Russia willpromote a broad agenda. Undoubtedly strengthening security cooperation, maintenanceof stability in the SCO region, first and foremost in Central Asia, will beamong top priorities.

At theinitial stage,the SCO concentrated on combating most acutethreats to regional security – terrorism, separatism and extremism. RegionalCounter-Terrorism Structure was set up in Tashkent in 2004. Numerous significantintergovernmental documents providing a legal basis for cooperation in variousareas of security have been signed. Programs on Countering Terrorism,Separatism and Extremism are being adopted every three years. But what is mostimportant - all these agreements have been translated into concrete coordinatedactions of law enforcement agencies of the six countries,which helped to prevent hundreds of terrorist attacks and to arrest thousandsof terrorists.

Astime went by,new challenges and threats began to emerge comingto the forefront of the SCO security agenda. They include namely narcotic drugstrafficking, money laundering, transnational organized crime, cyber-terrorism,cyber-crime etc. It also became evident that all security threats in our regionare interconnected.

Thatis why Mr. Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, put forward aninitiative to transform the existing SCO Regional Counter-Terrorism Structurethat has proved to be an effective organ to fight terrorists into a UniversalCenter for Countering Threats to Security of the SCO Member-States. We viewthis future Center as a full-fledged security cooperation mechanism which willallow Member-States to deal with the whole range of challenges to security andstability in a more systemic and coordinated manner.

Anotherserious problem is the rise of radicalism and xenophobia throughout the world,and the SCO Member-States are not an exception. Our countries need to joinhands in fighting extremism and preventing terrorism not only by force but alsousing “soft power”. This is a work in which - in addition to respectivegovernmental bodies – NGOs, public associations and all layers of our societiesmust participate. Special role here belongs to educational institutions,mass-media, church and confessional communities, youth movements, businesscircles etc.

Reporter: You have emphasized the realistic threat facingregional and international information security. Could you explain it?

Kirill Barsky: Information security, or cyber security, is oneof the most serious challenges facing the international community, individualcountries and corporate sector. The SCO Member-States were among the first topay close attention to this issue.

In2006a special SCO Expert Group onInformation Security was set up. It came to a conclusion that the world needs acomprehensive approach to this issue based on the assumption that threats toglobal and national cyber security include not only terrorist threats andcriminal threats, but also a danger of military use of ICT as a “Three-in-OneConcept”.

Stemming from this approach, expertsworked out an intergovernmental SCO Agreement on cooperation in the sphere ofinternational information security. It defined information threats and outlinedprinciples, areas, forms and mechanisms of cooperation, including modalities ofhow the States-Parties should coordinate their efforts and provide mutualassistance in countering information security threats. By the way, thisinnovative document is open to the accession of any country, not limiting itsscope only to the SCO Member-States.

Now thatthe above agreement entered into force, experts of the SCO countries embarkedon a concrete work to implement it in all aspects.The recent meeting of the Expert Group was convened last May in Beijing and achieved commendable results. But a lotstill remains to be done to protect SCO Member-States from various cyberthreats and to promote our vision of cyber security cooperation worldwide.

Reporter: BRICS draftedaresolution“StrengtheningInternationalCooperation toCombatCybercrime”, requesting a furtherresearch on cybercrime. What measures will Russia take on boosting the tiesamong the SCO members in response to this challenge?

Kirill Barsky: The problem of cyber security raises serious concern of the wholeworld. It is being widely discussed by different international organizations.Both BRICS and SCO are working on it, and positions of these two groupings areidentical. However, there are countries and organizations which have adifferent viewpoint.

In order to elaborate aunified approach to this complex issue, the UN General Assembly decided toestablish a government-level Expert Group. It will meet in August in New Yorkfor its first session.

The SCO has already shared itsvision with other UN members as our input to the forthcoming meeting. In April2011 the six SCO Member-States drafted a voluntary“Code of Conduct of States in the Sphere of internationalinformation security”. Its purpose was to identify rights and responsibilitiesof states in the information space, to reconfirm their commitment toconstructive and responsible behavior, to stimulate their cooperation in addressingcommon threats and challenges and at the same time to reconfirm their adherenceto human rights and fundamental freedoms. All states areinvited to make a political commitment to cooperate in combating criminal orterrorist activity using ICT; to respect the rights and freedoms of citizens inthe information space; not to use ICT to carry out hostile activities or actsof aggression; not to proliferate information weapons and related technologies;to cooperate in combating criminal and terrorist activities which use ICT; tocurb dissemination of information which incites terrorism and extremism orundermines social stability and cultural values of other states; to reaffirmthe rights and responsibilities of all states to protect their information spaceand critical information infrastructure; to promote a multilateral, transparentand democratic international management of the Internet; to boost bilateral,regional and international cooperation.

The SCO Member-States’envoys to the UN requested the United Nations Secretary General to circulatethe “Code of Conduct” as an official document of the 66thsession ofthe UN General Assembly. We believe that a later stage can be upgraded to a GA resolution oreven to become a basis of a legally binding Convention on information securitywhich would include sections on military use of information technology,combating terrorism and crime in the information sphere. Theurgency of adoption of a universal document on this set of issues is clearly growing.

Reporter: You said the second pivot of the SCO is economiccooperation. The current slowing of the global economy influences Russianforeign trade. How will Russia cooperate with other SCO countries to meet thechallenge threatening the Asian economic development?

Kirill Barsky:The main priority of the SCO has been and willcontinue to be joint efforts of its Member-States to safeguard regionalsecurity and stability, in particular to combat terrorism, separatism andextremism. At the same time economic cooperationis also one of its important pillars. Alongsidewith cultural and humanitarian cooperation, economic cooperation is enshrinedin the SCO Charter as a significant area of collaboration. This is no surprisebecause the SCO was established and is developing as a comprehensive,full-fledged regional organization.

Fromthe economic point of view the SCO has a huge potential. Resources andadvantages of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistanas well as of five Observer-States and three dialogue partners should becombined for the benefit of closer regional cooperation. The most promisingspheres of cooperation are transport, energy, infrastructure, science andtechnology, especially ICT, agriculture etc.

TheSCO has already developed detailed plans of economic cooperation focusing onimplementation of concrete multilateral projects in the format of interestedcountries. We call this flexible formula a “Two Plus X” model. Relatedcountries can do it either through “G to G” channels, or by employing their stateor private companies. A growing number of such projects are being initiated bythe SCO Business Council, SCO Banking Association and SCO Youth Council, someof them already in the pipeline.

TheSCO does not need to become an integration organization since the Eurasianregional integration process is already in full swing with the Russia-Kazakhstan-BelarusCustoms Union at the core. But the SCO may effectively cooperate with otherregional entities including the Customs Union and its Eurasian EconomicCommission in the field of economy thus contributing to sustainable growth ofits Member-States and economic cooperation in the region.

Reporter: Once you said that SCO faced three mainresponsibilities: anti-terrorism, economic and humanitarian cooperation, whilethe last one plays a more and more important part. In which cultural areas willthe SCO members plan to boost their cooperation?

Kirill Barsky: In the modern world social networking plays anextremely important role. For a regional organization,a strong public support, protracted ties between NGOs, wide contactsbetween rank-and-file people have growing significance.We must bring people of thesix friendly nations together.

Todaythe SCO Member-States focus on promoting cooperation in the fields of culture,education, health care, emergency response and youth policy. In some areas goodprojects are being successfully implemented, for example the SCO NetworkUniversity which embraces 69 universities from different corners of the SCOcountries. In others cooperation projects have been already designed by theMember-States but are yet to be implemented.

Recentlynew promising initiatives have been aired, among them an idea to kick-start an SCOinter-civilizational dialogue.  It caninvolve research centers, religious and cultural organizations and mass-mediaof the SCO Member-States and Observer-States which represent the majority ofthe world civilizations, for that matter. Multilateral cooperation in thesphere of tourism is another area where relevant tourist companies andassociations can work together facilitating people-to-people contacts.

As astrategic goal we must strive for creating a common SCO cultural, educational,health and intellectual space. This will bring us closer to the realization ofan idea of an SCO Community in the future.

Reporter: In 2009, you launched a project on the history ofRussian diplomatic service. A Chinese saying goes, ‘take history as a mirror’.What is it all about and how will you benefit from it? What’s the main task ofthis work from the point of view of the future of ties between China andRussia?

Kirill Barsky:I started collecting materials on the history ofthe Russian/Soviet Embassy in China in 2009 and the work is going on. I thinkit is very important for a diplomatic service of any country not to forget itspredecessors, their names, careers and achievements. This way not only can wecommemorate previous generations of diplomats but also to educate diplomats ofthe young generation in the right spirit. To this end my colleagues and I aretaking efforts to streamline data contained in the Foreign Ministry archives,books on the history of Russian-Chinese and Soviet-Chinese relations andmemoirs of our famous China experts.

Ouraim is to compile detailed written records of the Embassy and its personnelthroughout the history since the establishment of the Embassy of the RussianEmpire in Beijing in 1860. In order to obtain first-hand information onwho was who in the Embassy, how our diplomats worked and lived, what kind ofpeople they were, we are interviewing veterans ofthe Russian diplomatic service.This work has received full support of the topofficials of our Ministry. 

Thefirst article we plan to publish in the coming months will be devoted to theestablishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the Republic ofChina in 1924 and the day-to-day work of the Soviet Embassyin China. Outstanding people were posted in Beijing at that time, and they dida great job to push ahead friendship and cooperation between our countries. Ihope it is going to be a very exciting reading.

InChina many books on diplomatic history have been written in recent years. NeverthelessI believe that some episodes of the diplomatic relations between the USSR andthe P.R.C. deserve further researching and publicizing. For example, it will beinteresting for readers to know more about first steps of the P.R.C. Embassy inMoscow after it was opened in 1949. At that time the Soviet Government renderedmassive assistance to the Chinese diplomatic mission. Premises, cars, furnitureand equipment were provided for free. The Soviet Foreign Ministry evenorganized special courses for the Chinese Embassy staffers who lacked diplomaticknowledge and practical experience in diplomacy. Young people in our countriesshould know these facts.

Introduction：

Kirill Barsky, Special Envoy of the President of the Russian Federation onthe Shanghai Cooperation Organization Affairs