RPT: PREVIEW - Lavrov To Meet With Indian Prime Minister, Foreign Minister During New Delhi Visit

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2020) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is set to hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday as part of his working visit to New Delhi.

Lavrov arrived in New Delhi, the second stop on his Asia tour, from Sri Lanka on Tuesday evening.

Apart from meetings with Jaishankar and Modi, the top Russian diplomat is also expected to deliver a speech at the Raisina Dialogue, a flagship geopolitical gathering in New Delhi sponsored by India's Ministry of External Affairs and Observer Research Foundation.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the visit will focus on pressing bilateral issues with an emphasis on upcoming top-level meetings and priorities set by the Russian-Indian summit in Vladivostok in September 2019.

Special focus will be put on preparations for Modi's visit to Moscow in May on occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

In addition, the top diplomats will exchange views on international issues, such as the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and Syria, the Foreign Ministry said. The matters pertaining to cooperation in the United Nations, Russia-India-China (RIC) format, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will also take center stage.

In the run-up to the upcoming talks, Jaishankar shared plans to discuss with Lavrov "everything" � from bilateral relations to Iran, Syria and Libya.

Trade, defense industry and nuclear energy cooperation will also be likely high on agenda, according to experts.

"[Russian-Indian] relations are multifaceted. I think the situation around Iran will certainly be discussed. We have a major Russian-Indian-Iranian project of an international transport corridor, so the risks and consequences of the current situation will certainly be in the focus," an associate professor of the Moscow State University's Institute of Asian and African Countries, Boris Volkhonsky, told Sputnik.