Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's Opening Statement at the Joint Press Interaction with Russian PM

"I am very pleased to welcome Prime Minister Zubkov and his distinguished delegation to India.

Prime Minister Zubkov's visit to India comes within three months of my own visit to Russia in November, 2007. Such high level exchanges between India and Russia reflect the time tested nature of the close and special ties that exist between our two countries.

Prime Minister Zubkov and I have had an extremely productive and comprehensive discussion on all aspects of our relationship.

I conveyed to the Prime Minister the importance we attach to his participation in the meeting of the Indo-Russia Forum on Trade and Investment and the "Year of Russia" in India. Later today, I will be accompanying the Prime Minister to formally inaugurate the "Year of Russia" in India.

In our discussions, we agreed to re-double our efforts to tap the full potential of our two economies. We agreed on the need to diversify our trade basket, and expand cooperation in sectors such as minerals, diamonds, transport and infrastructure, investment and services, and high technology.

For this we will operationalise the Joint Task Force to implement recommendations to increase bilateral trade to US$ 10 billion by 2010 and consider a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement.

We agreed that there was vast potential for mutually beneficial cooperation in the area of hydrocarbons. I expressed my hope that ongoing discussions between our oil and gas companies would result in finalization of joint projects in India, Russia and third countries.

We expressed our satisfaction at the status of our ongoing collaboration in the fields of science and technology, space and civil nuclear cooperation. We have finalised negotiations in regard to reaching an agreement on cooperation in the construction of additional nuclear power plants in India. We reaffirmed our commitment to build upon our defence relations which is an important pillar of our Strategic Partnership.

Our talks today have reaffirmed our joint commitment to further strengthen Indo-Russian relations for the mutual benefit and prosperity of our two peoples, and for our region and the world.

Thank you."