Russia seeks to play balancing role in world: Lavrov

By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is keen to play a balancing role in the new post-Cold War world order, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.

"For 300 years Russia has been carrying a fair proportion of the burden of maintaining balance in European and international affairs," he said in an annual speech to students of Moscow's International Relations Institute.

Lavrov said Russia's departures from this, for example after its ill-fated 19th century Crimean war against Turkey, Britain and France or between the two world wars, led to "unhealthiness in European politics leading the continent to catastrophe".

"Russia will continue playing its balancing role in international affairs and will never become part of any 'holy alliances' against anyone," he said.

Lavrov traditionally uses his speeches in the diplomatic college to set guidelines and priorities for a year ahead. He was speaking less than a year before President Vladimir Putin quits and hands over powers to a successor.

Lavrov reiterated Russia's view that the emergence of new centers of power, like China and India, created a need for a new way of looking at how to manage the world.

"These conditions dictate the need for a collective leadership by leading nations, something one may call a 21st century concerto," he said.

Russia, Lavrov said, was keen to play a role as a bridge between the old "Euro-Atlantic world" and new emerging powers.

Putin's assertive foreign policy has fuelled concerns in the West, alarmed by what it fears could be a revival of Russian imperialism.

It has also created deep rifts in a series of international issues ranging from discussions on independence for Kosovo to U.S. plans to deploy part of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

But compared to his speech last year when he criticized U.S. "unilateralism", Lavrov struck a more conciliatory tone.

He said Russia was interested in closer ties with the West. "It is time to think about a new definition of 'Atlanticism', which would not exclude Russia."