I / St Petersberg July 17, 2006
| Ahead of his informal summit with leaders of India and China, Russian President Vladimir Putin today said economic issues would top the agenda of the trilateral meet on the sidelines of G-8 summit here. "So far, despite the high level of political interaction, our economic cooperation has not been sufficiently effective," Putin said summing up the outcome of yesterday's session of the G-8 summit attended by leaders from the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, France and Italy, besides Russia. Putin, who will later today hold bilateral and trilateral meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese President Hu Jintao said, "Our meeting in this format will focus on the development of economic ties between the three countries." He said the discussions in the trilateral format would promote mutual trust not only between India, Russia and China but also at the regional and global levels. Earlier, Putin had said he would back the expansion of the G-8 to include India and China as it would be difficult to imagine how international financial and energy problems could be solved without involving them. Commenting on the trilateral summit, the government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta today did not rule out the possibility that in future, the G-7 would have to compete and co-operate with the G-3 i.e, Russia, India, China. |
