TASS reports: Russia, despite possessing a full range of rare earth metals itself, is ready to cooperate in this area within the territories of Central Asian states, Director of the Third CIS Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Sternik said. "In the field of rare earth metals, Russia offers equal partnership conditions, primarily personnel training, joint production processes and research. In general, the mining industry in Central Asia was largely inherited from Soviet times," Sternik said.
"Even despite the fact that Russia possesses the full range of rare earth metals, we are still ready to develop cooperation within the territories of Central Asian states," he added. "As was once the case with hydrocarbons, we never had a shortage of either oil or gas, but that did not prevent us from drilling for and extracting them around the world," he noted. "We should also look here at the prospects for cooperation with China, since Central Asia’s mineral resources can be more easily linked through shared infrastructure with production capacities both in Russia and in China, combined with China’s most advanced extraction and processing technologies and, of course, financial resources," Sternik said.
Originally reported by TASS. This story has been edited and re-presented by BRIC Team.
