Need for comprehensive economic agreement with Russia: India

NEW DELHI: Ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit here, a senior government official on Thursday stressed on the "critical" need for a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement between Russia and India to boost trade ties.

He also highlighted that the countries are "strategic partners" not due to "sentimentalism" or common history but because their interests coincide.

"Both countries have moved towards multipolar and multi- vector, as they are known in Russia, engagements," Ajay Bisaria, Joint Secretary (Eurasia) in the Ministry of External Affairs said, adding the two countries have moved ahead of Soviet sentimentalism and their ties are determined by a very pragmatic understanding of national interests in post- ideological era.

"Today, we are close friends and strategic partners not because of sentimentalism or not because of common history but because our interests really coincide," he said in his address at the Foreign Policy Forum on India-Russia relations.

Lamenting that bilateral trade remains a "disappointing" feature, Bisaria said a number of ideas are being worked out to increase the numbers.

"One of the ideas is to try and work out a comprehensive economic cooperation agreement or a free trade agreement between India and the unifying Eurasian states...We feel that an economic cooperation agreement will be critical," he said.

The bilateral trade stood at USD 9 billion last year and Russian statistics say there has been a 38 per cent growth, "which will take us beyond the psychological mark of USD 10 billion," he said.