Bangalore, October 26
Like the SAARC meetings often get reduced to an India-Pakistan affair, sudden explosion of bilateral issues between India and China may ensure that the RIC (Russia-India-China) meeting being held in Bangalore tomorrow turn out to be primarily an India-China exchange with Russia being pushed to the sidelines.
The one-day event in India’s IT capital, the city selected as the venue of the meeting by Foreign Minister SM Krishna, would see an exclusive bilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of China and India followed by the meeting of the foreign ministers of the three countries.
The pre-conference press briefing addressed here today by Vishnu Kumar, a spokesman in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and a joint secretary in the MEA, saw a volley of questions from journalists on Sino-India relations. Russia was totally left out from the purview of media queries.
Kumar, who was assisted by MEA joint secretaries Gurjit Singh (Eurasia) and Vijay Gokhale (East Asia), described India’s relationship with Russia as “time-tested” and that with China as “strategic and cooperative”.
Kumar tried his best to play down the differences between India and China. Answering a question, he said convergences between the two countries had grown over the years while divergences between the two neighbours had narrowed down.
On recent reports of incursions by the Chinese Army into Indian territory, he said the border between the two neighbours was not clearly defined. Kumar said in the past also there were incursions by the Chinese across the Line of Control. He sidestepped a question on whether Arunachal Pradesh would figure in the meeting between Krishna and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jie
Chi.
Trade between India and China had increased manifold in the recent past, Vishnu Kumar said. He added that it was being expected that the trade between the two neighbours would touch the $60 billion mark by 2010.
Tomorrow’s meeting would be the ninth meeting of RIC and the fifth stand-alone meeting of the forum. Vishnu said the tripartite forum was a good platform for political exchanges and it also helped in consolidating trade and business relations among the three countries in areas such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, infrastructure and energy sectors.
The three foreign ministers would exchange views on regional as well as global issues, the MEA spokesman said.
He said the meeting was taking place in the backdrop of two important events. The events, he said, were the recent meeting between the premiers of India and China in Thailand and visit by Krishna to Russia to co-chair a session of Indo-Russian Intergovernmental Commission (IRIGC).
