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India, Russia to hold summit this year

Vladimir Radyuhin

Packed programme for bilateral exchanges Mr. Natwar Singh offered to allocate around $100 million to support cooperation in new areas identified by Mr. Kalam during his recent visit to Russia

VLADIVOSTOK: India and Russia will hold an annual bilateral summit before this year-end, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said here.

Speaking after a meeting with External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh held on the sidelines of an India-Russia-China interaction on Thursday, Mr. Lavrov announced a packed programme for India-Russia exchanges for this year.

Many visits

The programme includes a visit by Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to India, the External Affairs Minister's visit to Russia, a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Commission for trade, economic, scientific-technological cooperation. It will be crowned by an annual summit towards the end of the year when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will come to Russia.

Mr. Natwar Singh described these exchanges as "very valuable" and as a follow-up to last year's visit of President Vladimir Putin to India and the visits of Dr. Singh and President A.P.J Abdul Kalam to Moscow this year.

During his 50-minute meeting with Mr. Lavrov, Mr. Natwar Singh offered to allocate around $100 million to support cooperation in new areas identified by Mr. Kalam during his recent visit to Russia, such as information technology, and bio- and nano-technologies.

The External Affairs Minister also urged Mr. Lavrov to speed up a decision by the Russian state oil major, Rosneft, to give India equity in one of its oil fields.

An hour-long breakfast meeting of the External Affairs Minister with his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, was dominated by the reform of the United Nations.

Mr. Li reiterated China's earlier stated position that it would not create obstacles to India's bid to win permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council.

At the same time, China insists on achieving consensus among all U.N. members on the proposed Security Council expansion.

Mr. Natwar Singh is understood to have stressed that the time has come to act and use the opportunity created by the broad support for U.N. reform.

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