00:00We now go with our special envoy in Kazan, Yunus Soner, for more information on the BRICS Plus 2024 Summit.
00:07Hello, good afternoon, good night, good evening from the city of Kazan in the Russian Federation,
00:12a city that is a symbol for the meeting of East and West as it has a population both Christian
00:22represented by its churches and Muslim represented by its mosques. But today and the days ahead,
00:30Kazan will be a symbol of the Global South because here will take place the BRICS Summit of this year
00:39starting tomorrow 22nd of October and lasting 24th of October, an important gathering of the
00:47countries of the Global South. 33 countries will be represented in this summit, 22 of them will
00:55be represented at the level of head of state or head of government, prime minister or presidential
01:01level. We know that there is a huge interest towards the alliance, that there are around 30
01:10members, 30 countries who think, who have expressed the will to join the alliance and this
01:17will be the number one agenda of this summit actually. How to relate to these new members,
01:25maybe establishing a new partner state system, these are proposals that will be discussed
01:31on this summit also as well as concrete and urgent requires or demands of certain countries
01:41that want to join the BRICS alliance. Remember among these countries are heavyweights of the
01:47Global South such as Venezuela and Cuba from Latin America, from Africa we have Nigeria and
01:54Kenya, very populous countries, from Eurasia let's say we have Turkey that expressed to join
02:01the alliance, from Asia we have Malaysia and Indonesia that also stated that they were
02:07interested in joining the alliance. So this will be topic one. Topic two in regards to the alliance
02:13will be the matter how will it proceed, how will it progress in terms of institutional development.
02:20Right now BRICS is merely described as a forum, as a gathering of heads of state and of ministers
02:27at lower level but there are proposals to advance the organization, the alliance more
02:33organizationally, to introduce rules of decision making, to introduce new formats so that maybe a
02:41new secretariat also for the alliance so that it becomes a more stable, more institutional framework.
02:49Deepening that integration is the main topic in terms of the economic sphere where we can highlight
02:59also the other very famous key word here, de-dollarization or maybe better said creating
03:08an alternative to the western dominated financial system. What's here on the agenda? The Russian
03:15federation which has the chairmanship of the alliance this year has presented several proposals
03:22among them is creating a network between national commercial banks via cryptocurrencies and
03:31blockchains so that these can exchange with each other trade and payments and establish a payment
03:38system so that they don't need to get to refer to the western dominated financial system
03:45and look for US dollars to finance foreign trade among themselves. But it doesn't stop there,
03:52there are more ideas in regards to integrating the countries with each other. There is the idea
03:58of establishing a BRICS reserve system so that countries that fall into a kind of economic crisis
04:06can recur to this reserve system which would essentially be an alternative to the infamous
04:14international monetary fund. Moreover, there is the proposal to create trading platforms,
04:22international trading platforms for BRICS countries and others that might like to join them
04:28to trade major commodities such as grain or also energy, oil products, mining products.
04:38These are traditionally traded and sold and bought and their prices dominated in western
04:45financial markets so this proposal would establish an alternative to them not dominated by western
04:53trading exchange platforms but by the BRICS platform. There are of course also ideas on the
05:00humanitarian and cultural level, there is the idea of deepening the inter-parliamentarian
05:06cooperation, there have been discussions about deepening scientific cooperation between BRICS
05:12countries, energy cooperation. There have been actually, this is worth mentioning, a number of
05:19summits before this presidential summit where ministers of BRICS countries have gathered on the
05:25level of economy, foreign ministers, agriculture, health, energy and so on to look for areas and
05:33possibilities of cooperation so these will also be discussed here on the BRICS forum that lasts
05:40until October 24. But the alliance does not close its eyes to the current global conflicts which
05:48dominate the agenda such as the war in Ukraine or the Israeli aggression against Palestine so
05:56these will also be dealt with in sessions. We heard that there will be a session for Palestine
06:02separately and it's worth here remembering that the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas
06:09has arrived to Russia, he has met yesterday with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president,
06:16who has invited Mahmoud Abbas to join the BRICS summit as well. So BRICS will not only
06:23deal with its own institutional and organizational agenda, deepening institutional integration,
06:31deepening economic integration, creating an alternative to the western-dominated
06:36financial system, advancing de-dollarization, it will also seek to develop common positions
06:44on current global conflict issues. These will be the days where the global south will meet here
06:52in the Russian city of Kazan and as a Russian politician has stated in my eyes correctly,
06:59the future of humanity will not be dominated by the US elections but by the outcomes of this summit.
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