Mr. President,

China welcomes the Lithuanian initiative to convene this meeting on cooperation between the United Nations and the European Union in maintaining international peace and security. China welcomes Foreign Minister Linkevičius presiding over today’s meeting. We thank Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Baroness Ashton, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union, for their presence. We have listened attentively to the briefings of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Baroness Ashton.

The United Nations lies at the core of international collective security. The Security Council bears the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. Meanwhile, regional and subregional organizations are playing an increasingly significant role in maintaining peace and security and promoting the economic development of their respective regions, which represents a useful addition to United Nations efforts.

At present, global and regional challenges are steadily growing, and nations’ security interests are interlocked. Further strengthening the cooperation between the United Nations and regional and subregional organizations is conducive to the promotion of multilateralism and to the consolidation and strengthening of the international collective security machinery.

China supports the efforts of the United Nations and the Security Council, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter of the United Nations, to deepen their cooperation with the European Union and other regional and subregional organizations. We believe that the cooperation between the United Nations and such organizations needs to be focused on the maintenance of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms governing international relations. Attention needs to be paid to coordination and harmonization so as to give full play to each others comparative advantages in a joint effort to maintain international and regional peace, security, stability and development.

In recent years, the European Union has maintained collaboration with the United Nations and the Security Council, having participated and played a significant role in the settlement of regional hotspot issues, such as the Iranian nuclear programme, as well as situations in the Middle East, Somalia, Mali and the Central African Republic. In his briefing earlier this morning, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon mentioned the situation in the Central African Republic. Recently, the humanitarian and security situation in the Central African Republic has been steadily deteriorating. In particular, violent conflict between different religious groups continues to grow. China finds that deeply troubling and hopes that the international community will scale up its efforts and take action as soon as possible to help the new transitional Government of the Central African Republic to stop the violence and restore normal social order.

China encourages and supports the European Union in its continued efforts to play a positive and constructive role in maintaining international and regional peace and security. It is our hope that, in its cooperation with the United Nations and the Security Council, the European Union will adhere to the basic principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, such as sovereign equality and the peaceful settlement of disputes, and remain committed to the settlement of various regional hotspot issues through good offices, mediation and other peaceful means. China also hopes that the European Union will make use of its own resources and comparative advantage to provide the affected countries with development aid to build up their own development capacity, thereby rooting out the sources of conflict.

As pointed out by President Xi Jinping, China, as the largest developing country, and the European Union, as the largest union of developed States, are two major forces for maintaining world peace. As the two major economies, China and the European Union are two major markets for the promotion of common development, and as important birthplaces of Eastern and Western cultures, respectively. China and the European Union represent the two major civilizations that promote human progress.

Towards the end of 2013, the sixteenth China-EU summit was successfully convened in Beijing and issued the China-EU 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation, charting the course for future China-EU cooperation.

China is ready to work with the European Union to scale up its efforts to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two sides to steadily deepen the strategic mutual trust between China and the EU, strengthen cooperation in the United Nations and other multilateral forums, and jointly make further contributions to the promotion of world peace, stability and prosperity.

Thank you, Mr. President.