After a fruitful session at the G8 summit in Japan, Russia has expressed interest in the growth of India and China especially to promote cooperation in the spheres of trade and energy..
Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept released by the Kremlin, mentions President Dmitry Medvedev as saying – Russia’s friendship with India and China will be a priority of the country’s foreign policy in Asia. He identified the development of the friendly relations with the two countries as the “most important direction” of the Russian foreign policy in Asia.
“By deepening its strategic partnership with India, Russia pursues its principle course of strengthening interaction on topical international problems and augmentation of mutually beneficial bilateral ties in all the spheres, specially in ensuring substantial growth in the sphere of trade and economy,” the Press Trust of India notes Medvedev’s foreign policy concept as saying.
“Russia will expand the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership in all areas, based on shared basic fundamental approaches to key issues of world politics,” Xinhua quoted the Concept of Russian Foreign Policy approved by President Dmitry Medvedev as saying.
“Russia shares China’s and India’s interest in maintaining effective foreign policy and economic interaction in a trilateral format between the three countries,” Xinhua continued.
Over the last few years, changing global politics and collaborative efforts of the emerging RIC countries – Russia, India and China has initiated a trilateral dialogue. RIC leaders hope this dialogue would eventually resolve disputes in the region while promoting coordination and communication between the three nations on major international and regional issues.
The RIC countries which today form 40 percent of the world’s population occupy 20 percent of its surface and contribute less than 10 percent of the world’s GDP play manifold roles. While India and China are vital to Russia to aid it to control security in Central Asia, Russia is an important supplier of oil and gas to energy deficient, fast growing and geographically proximate India and China. Another potential area of cooperation is high technology. Experts predict that if the three nations pool their talent and assets in technology together, the region could emerge as the nucleus for future technologies.
The first trilateral meeting between Russia, India and China was held on the sidelines of the outreach session of the G8 St. Petersburg summit in July 2006. Determined to boost RIC economic and trade ties former Russian President Putin, speaking at the first trilateral summit reiterated Chinese President Hu Jintao’s stance – that negotiations held in the trilateral meeting would not only promote mutual trust between the Russia, India and China, but would also increase confidence at a global level. It was then that the three countries also agreed to cooperate in the fields of energy, science and technology.
Showing its commitment to the trilateral treaty, former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed the trilateral relationship during his visit to New Delhi in 1998, becoming the first leader to do so. Consequently, New Delhi and Beijing accepted Russia’s proposal to the trilateral dialogue as they understood the benefits in boosting cooperation between the RIC countries. Following the trilateral meeting of the heads of state, the foreign ministers of the three countries met in New Delhi on February 14, 2007.
The last meeting in New Delhi, formalized the trilateral dialogue between foreign ministers, with all three countries, agreeing to hold their next meeting in China. The burgeoning trilateral relations are gradually developing it is now up to the three nations to move from issue based coalitions to long term mutual inter dependence, leading to a true strategic alliance.
