Foreign Minister: relations with the United States is not hopeless

The group of governmental experts of the UN, among whom were adherents of Russia and the United States, prepared a report on the need for the adoption of the rules of conduct of States in information space.

Fruitful co-operation between Moscow and Washington is not harmed nor cooling of the relationship, neither Western punishment.

Russia and other powers of the Shanghai cooperation organization often made suggestions about making conscious rules of conduct of the countries in cyberspace, invariably encountering criticism from the West. But the States failed to reach agreement and produce a joint report, which is ready to become the basis for an international resolution under the auspices of the UN.

"We take this report as the beginning of a certain process. When the international community Matures, norms can be made legally binding, and until that time they will have the status of moral obligations" - quoted by "Kommersant" a co-sponsor, special adept of the Russian President on international cooperation in the field of information security, Ambassador for special assignments of the foreign Ministry Andrei Krutskikh.

During the preparation of the document the interaction between Russia and the United States was fruitful. "The precedent that we were able to agree in the conditions of confrontation and sanctions, makes this report even more valuable. This is a strong political signal that a relationship is not hopeless, that we can agree to take joint and collective diplomatic efforts," says the diplomat.

"All 20 of the adepts of the member States of the GGE (of the group of governmental experts. - Approx. ed.) has made its own contribution to the achievement of the outcome, this was a team effort. With specific regard to the Americans, they are really largely acted as a driving force in the preparation of appropriate sections of this report, although we as part of the discussion process are often the first to put forward the ideas of a certain rule. But the document was formed largely due to the structural flexibility of the specialist of the United States, and I'm not going to deny that," he said.

"The work of the group was transformed into a tug-of-war, and was based on a joint commitment to the result. All powers had the opportunity to discuss their vision of the rulebook. And each proposal was discussed in a constructive manner. The main thing is that we all have been configured on the report, which would agree with the followers of all 20 States. And it happened," said Krutskikh.

"All 3 of the report of the GGE, bilateral Russian-Chinese and Russian-American agreements in the field of information security, and other bilateral and regional arrangements, even at the scale of the OSCE and ASEAN, Russia considers as small steps toward a big goal. Ideally, Russia would have preferred a legally binding international Convention under the auspices of the UN on securing large-scale information security", - said Russian Ambassador.

Note that this is not the 1st case, when Moscow and Washington had forgotten about the existing differences in the time crucial to both sides of the negotiations. It happened at the conclusion of an agreement on Tehran's nuclear program that allowed us to get over the decades of discussion and soften the sanctions regime against Iran.

sections: Politics, Accidents