Washington has been trying to persuade the Central Asian countries to refrain from any further development of relations with Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an audience of students and teachers at the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy on Wednesday, Eurasia Diary reports citing TASS.

"The United States has long worked on relations with the Central Asian countries," Lavrov said. "We know that it has been openly persuading the Central Asian countries, although most of them are our military and political allies, to refrain from the further development of relations with Russia. We never do things like that."

Lavrov stated that Central Asia, just like any other region of the world, should not become a scene of rivalry between major powers.

"It is always possible to find opportunities for developing cooperation with this or that country to mutual benefit and to safeguard one’s interests without trying to infringe on the legitimate interests of that country and to develop cooperation with third partners," he said. "Regrettably, the United States pursues such a policy. It manifests itself not only in Central Asia. The Americans conduct the same policy in relations with all of our foreign partners in Asia, Latin America and Africa. We draw the attention of our US counterparts to this whenever we meet. We believe it is wrong."

At the same time Lavrov revealed that Moscow and Washington were pushing ahead with cooperation on a number of tracks, including Syria.

"Although the United States and the coalition it leads are present in Syria illegally, we do not wish to create more problems for the Syrian people and for our military personnel, who at the request of Syria’s legitimate government work there to help fight terrorism and maintain stability," Lavrov said. "There is a channel of communication between the Russian and US military. It works professionally and prevents the risks of any unintentional incidents."