Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

After a fruitful session at the G8 summit in Japan, Russia has expressed interest in the growth of India and China.

Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept released by the Kremlin yesterday, quotes 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,” it said.

The growing convergence in the world view of China, India and Russia brought them into a trilateral dialogue, which in Chinese President Jintao’s words would see “the three nations work together for further communication and coordination in major international and regional issues and promote the solution of disputes and differences through dialogue.”

Russian President Putin, while speaking at the first trilateral summit between China, India and Russia in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July 2006 echoed Hu: “…that discussions held in the trilateral meeting would promote mutual trust not only between India, Russia and China individually, but also at regional and global levels.” Beijing and New Delhi accepted Russia’s proposal to hold trilateral summit because “it was beneficial to boosting the cooperation among the three countries as well as maintaining multipolarity … in the world.” Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov was the first leader to propose the trilateral relationship between China, India, and Russia during his visit to New Delhi in 1998.

The first trilateral summit was followed by a meeting of the foreign ministers of three countries in New Delhi on February 14, 2007. In a joint communiqué, the foreign ministers “expressed their conviction that democratization of international relations is the key to building an increasingly multipolar world order”, reported Spero News

During his recent visit to New Delhi on January 25-26, 2007, as the guest of honor on India’s Republic Day, President Putin further discussed trilateral cooperation with Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh. Later, standing shoulder to shoulder with Singh, he told a news conference in New Delhi: “We want to resolve regional problems in a way acceptable to all sides. We therefore think that there are good prospects for working together in a trilateral format.” Indians who have long been beholden to Russia seems to embrace Putin’s trilateral initiative, while remaining skeptical of the Indo-U.S. alliance that is currently in the works. K. Subrahmanyam, India’s foremost observer of strategic affairs, gratefully speaks of Indian pull towards Moscow: ”

Russia has seen India as a key to Asian stability for the past 50 years, some four decades before George W. Bush’s team reached that conclusion.” The formation of trilateral dialogue has already been institutionalized. As part of this dialogue, Chinese, Indian and Russian foreign ministers held their first meeting in June 2005 in Vladivostok, Russia. As noted above, they met again in New Delhi in February 2007. Similarly, the leaders of three countries have been holding trilateral summits on the sidelines of G-8 meetings, of which Russia is a member and at which China and India have been regular invitees since 2006.