Official Spokesperson, Shri Raveesh Kumar:Friends good afternoon and welcome to the last briefing on day two of Prime Minister’s presence at the G20 Summit. It has been a hectic day. Prime
Minister attended three multilateral and plurilateral meetings apart from his intervention at the G20 Summit. He also had four bilateral meetings; with the United States, Saudi Arabia, Republic of Korea and Germany. He also had two pull aside meetings with
Vietnam and with the World Bank President.
We have already briefed you on other meetings. Today I have the Foreign Secretary with me who will brief you all on just concluded Russia-India-China leader’s meeting and after that we will take maybe just one or two questions.
Foreign Secretary of India, Shri Vijay Gokhale:Thank you Raveesh. We have just concluded the Russia-India-China Summit Meeting in the margins of the G20. This is the second meeting coming
after the first meeting in Buenos Aires where the G20 was held in December last year.
The three leaders essentially all spoke on the international situation that the world is currently facing, both the challenges on the economic side and the challenges on the side of peace and stability and the leaders all agreed that it
is important at this time, given the current situation, the lack of stability, the many changes that are taking place that we strengthen the international system led by the United Nations and that we uphold international order based on accepted international
norms and international law and that we promote a multi-polar world, a world in which there are many centers of influence and stability and we also spoke about democracy for international relations.
Secondly, some discussion took place on the global trading regime and on the challenges that the world faces in terms of the growth of unilateral action, protectionist tendencies. The challenges to the WTO itself as an institution and
the need for reform.
All three leaders have agreed that in an era of economic change and global change it is important to maintain the trend of globalization, it is important to maintain liberalization of trade, of free trading system, an open trading system,
a rules based trading system, to oppose the tendency towards protectionism and to give a proper direction to WTO reform and in that context all leaders also spoke of the need to ensure that the agenda of the developing countries and of the least developed
countries are given some importance when we discuss the WTO reforms.
The third area in which all leaders touched upon was safeguarding international and regional peace and security. Although no specific topic was taken up the leadership of all three countries essentially felt that they need to be multilateral
solutions, that there need to be efforts to address these challenges through consultations, through peaceful negotiations and that it is important for the peace and stability of the world that we all act through established institutions rather than in a unilateral
fashion or as per groups of countries which have no international sanction.
Terrorism of course was touched upon. Prime Minister himself said that this is something that is a global challenge, it must be combated by all. He recalled that he has proposed to many world leaders that there should be a global international
conference on terrorism, and he was sure that China and Russia would support this.
Finally, of course, they did discuss how to promote trilateral cooperation in various areas and the meeting has concluded with the three leaders tasking their foreign ministers to come with specific proposals from out of the suggestions
and the ideas that have come from this meeting and to report back at the next informal meeting of the leaders. They have agreed that this arrangement, this informal summit arrangement in the margins of international conferences will continue and go on ahead.
Thank you.
Official Spokesperson, Shri Raveesh Kumar:The opening remarks of the Prime Minister have been uploaded on the website. Thank you all for joining.
(Concludes)