To Russia and China's Push for Revival of Trilateral Platform, India Gives a Tepid Response
New Delhi: India on July 17 gave a lukewarm public reception to the recent push by Russia and China to revive the trilateral format that has remained dormant for several years due to tensions between the two Asian giants.
The Russia-India-China (RIC) format, initiated by then Russian foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov in 1996, has not held a meeting in recent years, largely due to the military standoff between India and China in Eastern Ladakh since 2020. While both Moscow and Beijing have expressed fresh interest in restarting the mechanism, India appears to be treading carefully.
At the weekly media briefing on Thursday, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the RIC was a consultative platform, but avoided confirming any imminent meeting.
“Look, this consultative format is a mechanism where the three countries come and discuss global issues and regional issues of interest to them. As to when this particular RIC format meeting is going to be held, it is something that will be worked out among the three countries in a mutually convenient manner, and we will let you know as and when that happens at an appropriate time when the meeting is to take place,” Jaiswal said.
Indian official sources were more categorical that no meeting of the RIC format has been agreed to so far. “There are no discussions underway on its scheduling,” said a source.
Meanwhile, both Russia and China publicly threw their weight behind efforts to restart the format. Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko told Russian news portal Izvestia that Moscow had raised the issue with both India and China. “This topic appears in our negotiations with both of them. We are interested in making this format work, because these three countries are important partners, besides the founders of BRICS,” he said.
He added that the absence of the trilateral forum “looks inappropriate” and expressed hope that it could be revived “when relations between these states reach a level that allows them to work in a trilateral format.”
In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian endorsed Rudenko’s comments. “China-Russia-India cooperation not only serves the respective interests of the three countries but also helps uphold peace, security, stability and progress in the region and the world,” he said in answer to a question from Russian state news agency TASS at the daily briefing. Lin added that China is ready to maintain communication with Russia and India to advance trilateral cooperation.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who has consistently advocated for reviving the RIC over the years, reiterated his support for the format, which had been first disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and then stalled by the India-China military standoff in eastern Ladakh. “Now that tensions along the India-China border have significantly eased, in my assessment, and the situation is normalising with ongoing dialogue between New Delhi and Beijing, I believe we can revive this trilateral format,” Lavrov said in June.
Bilateral exchanges between India and China came to a standstill following the 2020 standoff and the clash in Galwan, but dialogue has gradually resumed over the past nine months after prime minister Narendra Modi met Chinese president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan last year.
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