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Russia-India-China trilateral meeting of Foreign Ministers in Bangalore today

BANGALORE: After it played host to a SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) meeting 23 years ago, Bangalore has been chosen as the venue for the first meeting outside New Delhi of the Foreign Ministers of India, Russia and China.

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to deliberate on regional and international issues during the ninth trilateral meeting to be held at Hotel Leela Palace here on Tuesday.

The venue for the SAARC meet in 1986 was the Legislative Assembly Hall at the Vidhana Soudha and Hotel Taj West End. It was around the same time that Bangalore also played host to a meeting between LTTE chief late V. Prabhakaran and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

A Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Vishnu Prakash, told presspersons here on Monday that the decision to hold the meeting in Bangalore was taken by Mr. Krishna.

Normally, such meetings are held in the national capitals of the host countries, Mr. Prakash said. However, consensus had emerged between the three countries to hold the meetings away from the national capitals. Earlier meetings too were not held in either Beijing or Moscow. “They were held in Yekaterinburg in Russia and Harbin in China,” he said.

“We are happy to hold this meeting in Bangalore,” Mr. Prakash said.

Endorsing Mr. Krishna’s decision to hold the meeting in Bangalore, an official from the Ministry said that India was not just New Delhi alone.

Asked whether the meeting in Bangalore could mark the beginning of a new trend to move the venues of international meetings out of New Delhi to other cities such as Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata, the officials said nothing had been finalised yet.

The Foreign Ministers of the three countries are expected to begin thrashing out contentious regional and trilateral issues during the meeting scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.

During the post-lunch session, a bilateral meeting will be held between Mr. Krishna and Mr. Yang Jiechi.

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