Russia, India and China display tendency to interact in common interests: FM Lavrov

Moscow: Russia, India and China are aware of their common interests in several sectors and there is an overt trend to develop mutual partnership, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday.

Lavrov was referring to the recent bonhomie displayed by the leaders of the three countries at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin last week.

Triple handshake and huddle of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the SCO summit hogged global headlines.

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It even prompted US President Donald Trump, in a social media post, to lament the loss of India and Russia to “deepest and darkest” China.

“It is a demonstration that three great powers, representing three great civilisations, are aware of their common interests in a number of areas,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian State TV.

Setting aside speculation, Lavrov clarified: “This does not mean that everything is 100 per cent the same, but there is a tendency for China, Russia and India to develop their partnership, deriving mutual benefit from those areas, where we have the same interests.”

According to the foreign minister, the common interests of the three countries lie in developing the economy, solving social problems, and improving the living standards of the population.

Though the focus of the SCO summit was to ensure deeper security and economic complementarities among its member nations, what drew larger attention was the public display of bonhomie among Modi, Putin and Xi, signalling a broader convergence among the leading three powers.

A video of Modi and Putin holding hands and walking towards Xi, and then all three forming a close circle as good friends had gone viral on social media.

Trump’s comment about losing India to China came amid a downturn in relations between New Delhi and Washington after the US president doubled tariffs on Indian goods to a whopping 50 per cent, including a 25 per cent additional duties for India’s purchase of Russian oil.

Meanwhile, a top oriental expert here has ruled out a close-knit RIC (Russia-India-China) dialogue.

Speaking in a regular rubric of VestiFM ‘The Asian Casket,’ Director of Moscow University’s Africa-Asia Institute Dr Aleksi Maslov underscored that in Asia, India is a major democracy, although different from Europe, and it has different decision-making mechanisms.

Maslov said he believes that interaction between the troika will deeply develop on a bilateral basis.

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