Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov characterized on Monday relations between Russia and Kazakhstan as strategic partnership. "The importance of good-neighbourly cooperation with Kazakhstan is determined for us not only by its geo-political situation, including in the Caspian region, but also by major human, economic and raw material potentials, the importance of the unique cosmodrome Baikonur, and an over four-million-strong Russian disapora," the foreign minister said in an interview with the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda daily on Monday. The top Russian diplomat highlighted a high pace of the development of bilateral relations, an intensive political dialogue at the summit and top levels. Lavrov said the two former Soviet republics constantly update the legal basis of cooperation, implement efficient joint projects, unite potentials in creating high technologies, jointly explore space, cooperate in peaceful uses of atomic energy as well as in the military sphere. Besides, Moscow and Astana actively coordinate efforts on the international arena - within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Community and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. "The most extended in the Commonwealth of Independent States Russian-Kazakh border is a border of mutual trust and peace," the foreign minister emphasized. "At the present crucial stage of the world development we must preserve and strengthen traditions of good-neighbourly relations, friendship and mutual understanding," he noted. "The slightest relaxing of attention, no matter on whose part, to these vitally important issues would have a most serious negative aftermath for our countries," Lavrov emphasized. An onward development of Russian-Kazakh relations makes a stabilizing contribution to the regional and global security. According to the minister, Central Asia is not only a centre of thousands-long cultural heritage, but is also "a region having a powerful human potential and a developed transport and industrial infrastructure, as well as rich in hydrocarbon and mineral resources". "All this provides the countries of the region with vast development opportunities," he noted. "In the foreseeable future, Central Asia will become one of strategic centres of the world economy," Lavrov emphasized.