ISTANBUL

The role of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will only grow in importance in the future, Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday.

"Together with partners, we're working to prevent subsidence of cooperation mechanisms within the CIS, which have shown a high practical return," Sergey Lavrov said at a conference on Eurasia, organized by the country's largest political party, United Russia, in which he is a member.

"This concerns the free trade zone agreement, transport, and logistics infrastructure, and the use of national currencies in mutual settlements. And, of course, we will promote the formation of new export-import channels. We attach particular importance to humanitarian cooperation," Lavrov said at the event, according to a report by United Russia.

Lavrov noted that the importance of the CIS would only increase in the future and that Russia was working with partners to expand mechanisms within the organization.

He also said that the CIS had declared Russian as a language of interethnic communication, adding that Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had backed a proposal to create an international organization to support and promote Russian in the world.

"On Oct. 14, at the CIS summit in Astana, the concept of forming such an organization under the auspices of the CIS was approved. We see the new structure as a separate, financially independent multilateral organization headquartered in one of the Russian cities, and the circle of potential participants as wide as possible, covering not only the CIS countries," Lavrov added.

Separately, he also said that it would be impossible to slow new independent centers of economic growth, financial power, and political influence as they strengthen their positions.

"In practical terms, we all see that the center of the world economy, the focus of the world economy, and behind it, politics has already begun to shift from the Euro-Atlantic to Eurasia quite a long time ago, although recently by historical standards," Lavrov said.

The economy should become the basis on which the architecture of peace, security, and mutual trust will be built in the future, he added.

Lavrov also underlined that work on forming a stable space for practical economic cooperation, as well as equal and indivisible security, must continue, adding that under the "successful implementation of this large-scale project," the only winners should not be the countries of Eurasia, but the entire world, which will "receive a new powerful source of stable development."

The conference, held at the headquarters of United Russia, was attended by senators and deputies of the State Duma, in addition to representatives of the parliamentary parties in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The CIS is a regional organization formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 by its former members to encourage cooperation in economic, political, and security affairs.