Russia confident about India's Security Council seat

A day before talks between leaders of the two countries, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov on Monday vigorously reiterated his country's support for India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and called for scaling up bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015.

A day before talks between leaders of the two countries, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov on Monday vigorously reiterated his country's support for India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and called for scaling up bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015.

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“We are confident that India will become a permanent member of the UN Security Council,” Ivanov said at a day-long meeting of the India-Russia Forum on trade and investment.

“We supported India for the UN seat years ago. We haven't changed our position,” Ivanov said a day before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is to hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The UN reforms will be among a slew of global issues that will be discussed between the two leaders.

Ivanov also made a strong pitch for enhancing economic content in the time-tested India-Russia partnership and asked businesses of the two sides to step up their efforts to more than double bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015.

Ivanov underlined that nuclear energy is becoming an increasing important area of bilateral cooperation and announced that Russia will be building two more reactors at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu.

The two countries should develop and expand the economic relationship that will increase the prosperity of the people of both sides, Ivanov said.

Accompanied by a large business delegation and senior ministers, Medvedev touches down here in the early hours of Tuesday, his second visit to the country in the last three years, for an annual summit meeting with Manmohan Singh.