Moscow ready for dialogue with U.S., revival of principle of peaceful coexistence possible - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW. March 8 (Interfax) - Moscow is ready for an honest and mutually respectful dialogue with the United States and retains hope that relations with Washington, D.C., would return to normal, Alexander Darchiyev, director of the North America Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said.

"We are open for an honest and mutually respectful dialogue to the same extent as the U.S. will be ready for it. Perhaps, it would do well to remember the well-forgotten principle that worked during the Cold War, peaceful coexistence, despite the values and ideals separating us which must not be forced on each other," Darchiyev told Interfax.

"And the proverbial 'rule-based order' alongside the 'progressive' norms rejecting the traditional morals also must not be forced upon us," the diplomat said.

"If we proceed from this understanding of the basis of bilateral relations in light of Russia and the U.S.'s special responsibility for the fate of the world as nuclear superpowers, we retain hope that normalcy in relations between our countries will come back," he said.

"But it, of course, demands the reciprocal movement of both parties. I would like to reiterate that we are ready for such reciprocity," Darchiyev said.