Germany's Maas Stresses Importance Of Clear Int'l Rules To Respond To Global Challenges

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th May, 2020) German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Monday stressed the importance of working on clear international rules needed to timely and efficiently address any future global challenges after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Today it is #covid19, tomorrow it may be a devastating cyber attack, a major ecological disaster or a conflict with high-tech weapons. This is why we have been working on clear international rules for years," Maas said at the German annual Ambassadors' Conference, as cited by the country's Foreign Ministry in a tweet.

During the opening of the online conference, Maas said that Europe should be "the engine for global, multilateral solutions" to overcome global crises.

Earlier in the day, the 23rd annual Potsdam Meetings conference, dedicated to cooperation between Russia and Germany, was held online as well. In his address to participants, read out by a representative of the German embassy in Russia, Maas called for an active dialogue between the two countries to form a new positive agenda in bilateral relations.

"We need an intensive dialogue, specifically between our countries, between governments, parliaments and societies ... This is the only way we can create a positive agenda as the basis for a new dynamic," Maas stated.

According to the German foreign minister, any consistent international solutions can only be achieved in a multilateral framework, and Russia can contribute to many of those decisions.

Relations between Moscow and western countries became aggravated in 2014, when the EU slapped economic sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Donbas and Crimea's reunification with Russia. Russia has denied having any role in the fighting in Ukraine, defended the democratic procedure of Crimea's referendum and retaliated by imposing a food embargo on the western nations. However, some EU countries, in particular, Germany and Italy, have recently begun questioning the effectiveness of the sanctions and began to look for different solutions to problems between Russia and the EU.