NEW DELHI: India on Thursday signaled openness to reviving the long-dormant Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral dialogue, following renewed calls from Moscow to reinstate the mechanism. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that any decision on resuming the format would be taken “in a mutually convenient manner.”Describing the RIC as a “consultative format,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal noted that it brings together the three nations to discuss regional and global issues of shared concern.“RIC is a consultative format, which is a mechanism where three countries come together to discuss global and regional issues of interest to them”. “The schedule will be worked out among the three countries, in a mutually convenient manner” he added, without confirming any specific timeline for a meeting.The Indian response comes days after Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov expressed strong interest in restarting the RIC dialogue. Speaking at a conference last month, Lavrov said, “I would like to confirm our genuine interest in the earliest resumption of the work within the format of the troika – Russia, India, China – which was established many years ago on the initiative of Yevgeny Primakov (former Russian Prime Minister).”The RIC framework has been largely inactive in recent years, initially due to the Covid-19 pandemic and later the 2020 India-China military standoff in Eastern Ladakh.Further boosting Moscow’s outreach, Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko said on Thursday that Russia is holding “active negotiations” with both New Delhi and Beijing to resume the trilateral format. “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, as quoted by a Russian news portal TASS.China, too, has thrown its weight behind the proposal. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian stated, “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,” news agency PTI reported.This comes amid Nato’s threat of possible secondary sanctions on countries maintaining trade ties with Russia. Nato chief Rutte, during a press conference in Washington alongside US Senators Thom Tillis and Jeanne Shaheen, urged India, China, and Brazil to reconsider their economic ties with Moscow or face “100 per cent secondary sanctions” if Russia does not commit to peace talks.The renewed push for RIC also comes in the backdrop of recent high-level diplomacy. External affairs minister S Jaishankar visited China last month for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) foreign ministers’ meeting, where he held bilateral talks with both Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.Earlier, national security adviser Ajit Doval and defence minister Rajnath Singh also visited China in June, signaling a phase of increased diplomatic engagements in the region.
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