China ready to cooperate with Russia to ease Middle East tension, foreign minister says

BEIJING, April 5 (Reuters) – China is willing to continue cooperating with Russia at the UN Security Council and make efforts to calm the situation in the Middle East, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in a phone call on Sunday.

Wang said that the main way to solve navigation problems in the Strait of Hormuz is to reach a ceasefire as soon as possible, adding that China has always advocated the political solution of hotspot problems through dialogue and negotiation.

The foreign ministers’ call comes ahead of a UN Security Council vote next week on a Bahrain resolution to protect commercial shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz.

According to a statement from his ministry, Wang told Lavrov that China and Russia, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, should “adopt an objective and balanced approach and try to gain greater understanding and support from the international community.”

In the statement made by the Russian Foreign Ministry, it was stated that the ministers discussed ways to achieve a rapid ceasefire and “start political-diplomatic dialogue”.

“We expressed satisfaction with the overlap in the approaches of Russia and China to most issues on the global agenda, including the situation around Iran and the unprovoked aggression of the United States and Israel against Iran,” the statement said.

China has repeatedly called for ceasefires in the Gulf region and the Middle East, calling for an end to more than a month of fighting that has largely blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping artery for oil and gas.

(Reporting by Shi Bu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Mark Porter)