The Arab countries and Russia sought to unify their stance to resolve all the Arab issues through peaceful means during their meeting in the Arab-Russian Cooperation Forum in Sudan. The forum concluded its sessions Wednesday in Sudan capital Khartoum on the level of ministers of foreign affairs to discuss major aspects of the current situation in the Middle East of mutual concern, Alquds reported. The meeting was chaired by Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shokry and Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby. "The forum seeks enhancing economic cooperation between the Arab countries and Russia, and aims at establishing economic partnership between the private sectors of the two sides," Sudanese Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Yousef Alkrdvani said. "The Arab world is no longer monopolized by the United States," Hussein Haredy, former assistant minister of foreign affairs told Albawabh. Haredy added that, "Egypt should revive its strong relations with Russia to achieve a considerable political balance in the Arab region," pointing out that "we should not separate the Egyptian-Russian relation from the Arab-Russian one." Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Minister's visit is considered the first to Sudan since the separation of South Sudan in 2011. Lavrov said the visit "aims to confirm our determination to assist the inter-Sudanese settlement process completion based on the known international legal framework and settlement of the task of stable normalization in Darfur based on the Peace Treaty signed in Doha in May 2011," according to the Russian news agency. During the talks in Khartoum, the sides discussed urgent regional and international issues with an emphasis on events in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the further developments of bilateral cooperation in the political and economic fields.
