FOREIGN MINISTERS HOLD OFFICIAL TALKS

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ In a scope of his official visit, the Minister of Foreign Affairs L.Bold held Thursday expanded talks with his counterpart of India Mr Salman Khurshid, sharing views on the Mongolia-India relations and on regional cooperation. The two Foreign Ministers expressed their satisfaction with deepening of the bilateral relations in the spheres of politics, education, defense and other sectors, and then agreed with a necessity to expand the ties in the trade and economic sectors. The air relations between the countries must be tackled first in order to fulfill these goals, the Ministers underlined. Mr Bold said his country has an aspiration to implement the comprehensive partnership cooperation with India that is one of the Third neighbours of Mongolia, and to bring the ties into a strategic level. The Minister Mr Bold underlined that Mongolia attaches a great importance to its relations with the Republic of India, and then expressed his willingness to make efforts to forward the bilateral relations into a new level. Saying that the Mongolia's economy is intensively growing year to year, Mr Bold has invited Indian companies to make investments to the sectors of energy, mining and infrastructure in Mongolia, and proposed the Indian side to collaborate with Mongolia in fortifying democracy and human rights in the region. Mr Bold also underlined the current cabinet of his country for reforms is working with key purposes to form the Mongolia's economic system which has a potential of competing at the international market, to reduce the dependence of mining sector at the economic area, and to develop the society for middle-income people by fairly delivering the mineral wealth. In turn, Mr Salman Khurshid expressed thanks to Mongolia for doing active works for the vital issues such as education for democracy by making initiatives on strengthening democracy in the region and for delivering the education for democracy in frames of the Community of Democracies (CoD). He said India is ready to activate the cooperation with Mongolia at an international arena and to back Mongolia at the 2015 election of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the 2022 election of the Non-Permanent Membership of the UN Security Council. Afterwards, Mr Bold met with Maya Singh, a member of the Rajya Sabha (Upper house of Indian parliament), discussing issues on developing the cooperation in the cultural and art sectors, and reached an agreement to organize specific measures. At the end of his visit, Mr Bold held a meeting with Mr Anand Sharma, the Minister of Commerce and Industry and Textiles, sharing views on the bilateral relations in the commercial and economic sectors. They said the countries aim to expand and activate the collaboration in the mining, agriculture, IT, education and financial spheres. In addition, the sides emphasized an importance to create a permanent mechanism to become a bridge between businessmen, and then considered that a forthcoming visit of Mr Anand Sharma to Mongolia will contribute to realizing these goals. Mr Mr Anand Sharma expressed a readiness to render support for strengthening the Mongolia-India traditional friendly cooperation, and said he plans to visit Mongolia soon together with Indian business delegates at an invitation of the Mongolian Minister of Economic Development. B.Khuder