Asia where new centers of power are growing stronger plays a big role in the transition to a multipolar world, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) on Thursday.

“The world is becoming a truly multipolar system. Asia where new centers of power are growing stronger plays quite a noticeable if not a key role in that,” he said.

Putin said Asian countries are engines of world economic growth.

“Here such integration associations as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Eurasian Economic Union act dynamically and efficiently,” he added.

Russia actively participates in all these processes, Putin said.

“We stand for Asia’s development and prosperity, for creating for these purposes a broad open space of mutually beneficial trade and investment cooperation, for broadening and deepening cooperation ties in various sectors of the economy,” he assured.

It was Moscow that stood at the origin of establishing the CICA Business Council, which has held within its framework over the past years “a lot of successful conferences and workshops across the entire economic agenda,” Putin said.

“And, of course, together with other Asian states, we take all efforts to create a system of equal and indivisible security based on universal and recognized principles of international law and the UN Charter,” the Russian leader added. (PNA)