Sushma to hold talks with Russian, Chinese counterparts

Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 10

Russia India China (RIC) Foreign Ministers will try and find acceptable positions instead of consensus on contentious issues as the Foreign Ministers’ meet in Delhi on Monday.

Sushma Swaraj will hold the15th round of trilateral with her counterparts Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Wang Yi of China.

Lavrov and Wang Yi will hold separate bilateral Monday morning on the sidelines, before entering into bilateral meetings each with Swaraj and then call on President Ram Nath Kovind.

Post the official trilateral talks, working lunch and joint press statements, Lavrov will deliver a public lecture on ‘Global Affairs and new vistas of Russia-India cooperation’. Wang Yi would attend an India-China Cultural evening.

It is learnt that with Chinese Foreign Minister in the room India’s key agenda would be to give a forward looking direction to the relationship without brushing important sensitive issues under the carpet. India would not want negativity to dominate talks.

Since the mutual disengagement post the 73-day Doklam standoff at the Bhutanese trijunction, Indian and Chinese top leadership have held meetings. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had official talks with President Xi Jinping at the BRICS Xiamen summit. He had a brief lounge meeting with Premier Li Keqiang at the East Asia Summit. “We expect to discuss all bilateral issues. We also expect that regional and certain global issues will also come up for discussion,” said Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar. 

One Belt One Road is the new thorn in ties with India’s opposition to China Pakistan Economic Corridor as its ‘flagship project’, making it an ‘organic connection’ in Delhi’s view. The issue of India’s membership bid to the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) is less likely to appear in India-China bilateral as Indian officials ‘do not want to continue asking China for support on NSG despite knowing what their position will be’.

But the matter could be voiced at the Trilateral given India’s enhanced nuclear credentials with entry into the arms control Wassenaar Arrangement last week. Security situation in Afghanistan-Pakistan, Korean nuclear crisis, revival of Quadrilateral dialogue, counter-terrorism, release of Hafiz Saeed and Chinese veto against the proposal in Security Council to proscribe Masood Azhar are likely to figure in talks.

The trilateral scheduled for April earlier this year was postponed after Beijing called it off objecting reportedly to the Dalai Lama’s Arunachal Pradesh visit. And the discussions in RIC in 2016 on Asia Pacific is now expected to be carried forward. 

With Russia, India would like to discuss further North-South transport corridor project and connectivity issues as well as transfer of technology to partner in defence manufacturing.