Though both leaders had met during the ASEAN Summit here and the G20 Summit at Chinese city of Hangzhou, this was the first one-to-one meeting between them.
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“PM @MedvedevRussia interacts with PM @narendramodi on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit”. China had scuttled New Delhi’s bid at the Plenary Session of NSG in June.
Bambawale also called for greater bilateral trade ties and said political issues will take time to resolve.
The most significant aspect to the meeting was symbolic.
Modi stressed that enhancing connectivity is at the heart of India’s strategic partnership with ASEAN.
The talks between the two leaders are likely to focus on terrorism, maritime security, disaster management, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).
Dwelling on the issue of disaster management, he said that India would host an East Asia conference on disaster management and emergency response and the Asian ministerial meeting on disaster risk response later this year and has established an East Asia virtual knowledge portal on disaster management.
He made his comments after it became clear that most of the other leaders gathered in the Laotian capital were going to let China off with a mild rebuke over its territorial expansion in the resource-rich waters.
India along with the USA have been calling for freedom of passage in the global waters, much to the chagrin of China, which is miffed at ONGC exploring for oil and gas at the invitation of Vietnam in the South China Sea waters. India is separated from the rest of Asia by the Himalayas, so Indian businesses are especially dependent on sea-borne commerce.
China has also objected in the past to India’s Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) undertaking exploration at the invitation of Vietnam in the SCS, which is believed to be rich in undersea deposits of oil and gas.
That makes New Delhi interested in what happens in that crucial body of water.
This would be the eighth meeting between Modi and Obama in two years.
“Several leaders remained seriously concerned over recent developments in the South China Sea …”
But in a statement later from China’s foreign ministry, Li was paraphrased as saying China was willing to work with Southeast Asian countries in “dispelling interference. and properly handling the South China Sea issue”.
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Mr Modi, speaking before leaders from 15 other countries, said India and most other countries of South Asia “are pursuing a peaceful path to economic prosperity.but there’s one country in our neighborhood whose competitive advantage rests exclusively in producing and exporting terrorism”.
