New Delhi: Despite strong ties with the US, New Delhi used the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral meeting at Osaka on Friday to highlight its position of “strengthening the international system led by the UN” and promoting a multilateral world, while Russia called for the RIC countries to take positions that are “close” or “coincide” with each other on “most issues of world economic and political agenda”. The three nations also resolved to take a strong stand on terrorism.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the trilateral meeting along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping and discussed issues including terrorism, challenges to global peace and stability, climate change and challenges to the global economy.

Mr Modi also attended a meeting of the leaders of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries who committed themselves to a “transparent, non-discriminatory, open, free and inclusive international trade, opposition to “protectionism and unilateralism”.

Foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale later said that at the trilateral RIC meeting, “Some discussions took place on the global trading regime and challenges that the world faces in terms of growth of unilateral action, protectionist tendencies, challenges to the WTO itself and the need for reform.”

He said all three leaders have agreed that in an era of economic change and global change, (that) it is important to maintain the trend of globalisation, liberalisation of trade, the free-trading system and open trading system, the rules-based trading system, the tendency towards protectionism and to give proper direction to WTO reform.”

The leaders also touched upon safeguarding international peace and security... They felt there needs to be multilateral solution to address these challenges through consultation, through peaceful negotiations and it is important for the peace and security that we all act through established institutions rather than in a unilateral fashion, he said.

Referring to the Brics meeting, he said that Mr Modi described terrorism as the biggest threat to humanity and a scourge that not only kills innocents but also severely affects the economic development and social stability.

The Brics also took the position that international rule-making on data flows be done within the ambit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as data flows are a form of trade. The group also called for steps to prevent a “digital divide” among nations.

The united stand on trade by the Brics nations is being in the context of increased protectionism by the US under the Trump administration and the threat of increased trade wars.

Mr Modi also made a strong pitch at the meeting for reform of multilateral institutions and availability of energy at affordable rate, Mr Gokhle said.