Russian foreign minister left for India.

MOSCOW, November 29 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov will pay a short visit to New Delhi on Monday. He will hold talks with Indian Foreign Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna and meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

An official visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to India
scheduled for December this year will be the main subject of the talks, a
Russian Foreign Ministry source told Itar-Tass. A week ago, Russian and
Indian foreign ministers discussed preparations for the Russian-Indian
summit at a bilateral meeting in the Chinese city of Wuhan on the
sidelines of the RIC (Russia, India, China) conference.
Strengthening relations with India is one of the priorities of Russia'
s foreign policy. Russian-Indian cooperation is based on closeness of
approaches to urgent international problems and convergence of long-term
national interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry went on to say.
The Russian-Indian inter-governmental commission for trade, economic,
scientific-technological and cultural cooperation held a regular meeting
on November 18. It demonstrated enormous potential for developing
bilateral ties: in 2009, bilateral trade exchanges stood at 7.5 billion
dollars, the figure increased by 20 percent in the first nine months of
this year and is expected to exceed nine billion dollars by year's end.
The two countries are implementing major bilateral projects and cooperate
in international arena through organizations like RIC (Russia, India and
China), BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). India has an observer
status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

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