'India, Russia will have to continue strategic coop'

Terming the global meltdown as a "challenging situation", Union Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes said India and Russia will have to continue "strategic cooperation" as it was in the past to tide over the current crisis.

Terming the global meltdown as a "challenging situation", Union Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes on Tuesday said India and Russia will have to continue "strategic cooperation" as it was in the past to tide over the current crisis.

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"The way two countries strategically cooperated in order to face certain situations in the world in those days, we have to continue to play that role even today," Fernandes said at a seminar organised on Contemporary Russian Diplomacy and Indo-Russian Relations here.

"Today we have a challenging situation that is meltdown. How to face the meltdown? India has the resilience yet when there is heat it affects everyone, it (meltdown) has affected India also. But, not in the same measure as it (meltdown) has affected the west," Fernandes said.

Russia is a strategic partner of India "as also the US", the Union Minister said.

He descibed the current year as "important" and hoped that relationship between India and Russia will reach greater heights."