| India, Russia and China get it going |
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| World Affairs Talk | |
| Thursday, 15 June 2006 | |
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In the meeting, India's Pranab Mukherjee, Russia's Sergei Lavrov and China's Li Zhaoxing discussed a wide range of issues including situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear problems and the Middle East conflict at a meeting that lasted nearly three hours. The meeting significantly comes less than a month after summit-level talks between India and Russia here after which both Manmohan Singh and Vladimir Putin expressed interest in pushing cooperation under the trilateral forum. The leaders said multilateral diplomacy was the need of the hour and the role of the United Nations had to be strengthened to enable it to deal more effectively with the challenges facing the world today. The three ministers discussed cooperation in the economic field with special focus on energy, transport infrastructure, health and high-technology. Lavrov said at a press briefing following the meeting, ‘the world's crises must be resolved through dialogue rather than confrontation. 'We have to work harder for the democratization of international relations based on multilateralism and diversity,' Li said. The three sides also agreed to coordinate action against all factors that feed international terrorism including its financing, illegal drug trafficking and transnational organized crime. It was decided that the three governments would facilitate a trilateral business forum by their respective apex business chambers and a meeting was likely to take place later this year. Mukherjee said they had agreed to continue interaction in a trilateral format, and the next meeting would be hosted by China. 'We hope to strengthen peace and security in the region and around the world through our interaction,' he said. The trilateral engagement was originally a Russian proposal first mooted in 1998 by the then prime minister Yevgeny Primakov. Russia in past voiced its support for India becoming a permanent member of the Security Council, while China remains non-committal though it says New Delhi has an important role to play in world affairs. If these three countries stick together to make full use of the mechanism of trilateral foreign ministers' meeting and push forward practical cooperation; they will sure to enhance communication and coordination on major international and regional issues for resolving disputes through negotiation and dialogue as the trilateral cooperation is aimed at enhancing friendship, seeking common development and safeguarding world and regional peace. These three politically alike nations now can push not only any major regional and global issues in the Security Council and other forums against world political giants but also will promote the domestic economic development in-between. Share & Bookmark             |
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