-The outcome of the trilateral meeting will ultimately depend on whether New Delhi still relies on the US as an outside factor in its relationship with Beijing….If no, then we will have every reason to hope that, working together, Russia, India and China will eventually be able to settle existing and future conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region.

A new security architecture in Asia and the Pacific will dominate the agenda when foreign ministers of Russia, India and China get together on Monday. During the meeting in Uhan, China, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will also discuss with his colleagues cooperation in forecasting natural disasters and dealing with their devastating aftermaths.

During President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Beijing in September the two countries’ leaders agreed on the need for the Asia-Pacific countries to reiterate the principle of the indivisibility of their common security in this generally unstable part of the world. 

In Moscow, foreign policy expert Andrei Volodin believes that if the  three ministers  manage to reach a common stand on regional security, the meeting will have every reason to be called a success. He fears, however, that India’s apprehension towards China’s increasingly active role in the region may be a problem here.

The outcome of the trilateral meeting will ultimately depend on whether New Delhi still relies on the US as an outside factor in its relationship with Beijing….If no, then we will have every reason to hope that, working together, Russia, India and China will eventually be able to settle existing and future conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region.

As we already said, Monday’s meeting will also deal with coordination of the three countries’ effort in early warning about and dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters, and here Russia has a lot to offer. This  country  provided humanitarian help and rescue personnel during  the devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan province and massive floods in India. With the process of global warming picking up, the importance of having a system of early warning about upcoming natural calamities can hardly be exaggerated – something we in Russia realized all too well this past summer…

Just hours before the start of Monday’s meeting in Uhan, emergency response experts will get together in New Delhi to map out a set of joint projects for next year when Russia takes over the organization’s rotating chair.