BEIJING: India on Monday reaffirmed its firm backing for its fellow emerging economies —a day after it stated its intent to strengthen ties with Beijing--one of the core members of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping. “I reiterate India attaches its utmost importance to its engagement with BRICS. Our Prime Minister had repeatedly underscored the importance of BRICS in the international arena and stressed the importance of intra-BRICS cooperation,” said visiting Minister of State of External Affairs, VK Singh, during the inaugural of the first BRICS foreign minister’s meeting. A day earlier, Mr. Singh had said, during his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that India looked forward “to strengthening and deepening its strategic partnership and mutual dialogue” with China. Analysts say that Gen. Singh’s remarks are yet another marker highlighting the thaw in China-Indian ties, following recent months of friction. Gen. Singh attributed the intent of the two countries to pursue a new round of engagement to the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Astana summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) earlier this month. He said the two leaders “had a fruitful and constructive dialogue” in Kazakhstan’s capital. They “laid down directions for us and for both the countries to mutual respect and mutual cooperation, (on) how to improve already existing mechanism, more trade, more commerce, (and) more people to people contact”. Xinhua news agency is reporting that during his meeting with Gen. Singh on Sunday, Mr. Wang said China and India were both major countries with great influence and that they should boost cooperation in the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and all other multilateral frameworks to make contribution to peace and stability in the region and the world at large. In his address, Gen. Singh stressed that the BRICS countries had achieved considerable understanding on security and counter-terrorism issues, following last year’s meeting in New Delhi of the National Security Advisers of the five countries. He added that the NSAs of the BRICS countries will meet again next month, ahead of the Xiamen summit.
