UPDATE: Economic power redistribution leads to international conflicts –Putin

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SOCHI, Oct 27 (PRIME) -- The scale and severity of international conflicts is only increasing as economic power is being redistributed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.

“The conflicts connected to redistribution of economic power and political influence are only growing. The burden of mutual distrust narrows our capabilities to answer to real challenges of the world society and to real threats effectively,” Putin said.

“The globalization projects is in crisis, and people in Europe are saying, and we hear that, that multi-culturalism is unviable.”

“I think that this situation is a result of a wrong, hasty, maybe even arrogant choice made by elites of some states a quarter of a century ago. Then…we had a chance to not just speed up the globalization process, but to switch it to another, harmonic and consistent, character,” he said.

Rules of the world’s economy and politics are constantly changing. “The idea that was true not long ago is often twisted inside out,” he said.

“Today, the powers that be benefit from some standards and norms, they make others comply with them. But if tomorrow these standards become nuisance, they throw (the standards) into a bin and acknowledge them as outdated, and set or try to set new rules,” he said.

Some countries even use sanctions in order to apply political pressure bypassing the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and create trade alliances with strict rules and barriers that are beneficial only to their own transnational corporations, he said.

“We do know why this is happening. They are unable to solve their piling problems through the WTO, this is they are quietly moving all these rules and the organization itself to a side and creating a new organization,” Putin said.

Russia tries to respect property rights, though it is not always successful in doing so. “We are striving to respect property rights…We don’t often succeed, and we should correct our practice and do many legislative things, but we will always strive for that,” Putin said, adding that the property right is one of the pillars of economic policy.

He also said that no one restricts business of Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko in Russia, where he owns the Roshen confectionery plant in the Lipetsk Region. “The plant is working rhythmically, pays wages, receives profit. There are no restrictions on operations with the profit, including on its transfer abroad,” he said.

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