A member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, the senator from Buryatia, Arnold Tulokhonov, visited the studio of Vestnik Kavkaza today. During the program Tribune he spoke about the current tasks of Russian foreign policy.
He called for the formation of a proper information policy. "Not so long ago I wrote an information note to the leadership of the Federation Council that our information policy in the field of international cooperation and international relations is not entirely correct: we say that everything is bad, but let's talk about the good things, there's more good in history than bad," the senator suggested, speaking about his initiative to erect a monument to Azerbaijani National Leader Heydar Aliyev in Buryatia in connection with the event uniting Russia and Azerbaijan.
"There is a small anniversary at the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM): 35 years since arrival of the first train to the Ango station in Buryatia. We perfectly remember how in 1983 Heydar Aliyev, as the first deputy prime minister of the USSR Council of Ministers, visited the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and oversaw the construction, helped us to solve many questions," Arnold Tulokhonov said.
"So I suggested to build a monument to Heydar Aliyev at the Ango station, and to invite Heydar Aliyev's family and the Azerbaijani diaspora to the official opening," the member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs said.
Another problem, according to Arnold Tulohonov, is the optimization of cooperation with the countries with which the Russian Federation has the longest borders – Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia. "My point of view that it is necessary to develop the cross-border cooperation, both at the regional level and the level of entities and municipalities. Recently I put forward the idea of creating the Association of Parliaments of countries of Northeast Asia. Why don't we create a similar association, especially since the Americans are creating the Asia-Pacific Partnership, which doesn't include Russia and China. We have to develop ideas of cooperation, mutually beneficial both for us and our partners, all the time," he stressed.
He also drew attention to the need for the participation of scientists in the integration projects, which could justify one or another solution, taken in the framework of the international organizations. "We have the SCO, BRICS, CSTO, EEU – they are very important for Russia, especially against the background of the political developments in the West. However, their activities, from my point of view, lack scientific justification. The EEU has no Committee on Science, nor a Committee on Environmental Issues, even though we have a lot of problems there. Irtysh and Amur are transboundary rivers that come from China. You can imagine what is happening to these rivers, if China, having no doubt that it is right, carries away water resources for their own purposes," Arnold Tulokhonov pointed out.
"We must solve together such problems as desertification of the Great Steppe, which stretches from the Carpathians to the Khingan. So we need a scientific background, justification and solution of environmental problems," the member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs concluded.
