Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today began his two nation visit to attend major back to back international summits that are aimed to find ways and means to combat not only the current global crisis but also take forward the sustainable development goals.
Dr Singh’s first port of call would be the beach resort of Los Cabos in Mexico where the heads of G20
and invitee countries would be participating in the 7th summit on June 18 and 19 and later head for
Brazil for the Rio+20 summit to be held from June 20.
He would make an overnight stay at Frankfurt during the onward journey and later halt at Pretoria before
returning to New Delhi in the late hours of June 23.
With the issue of the presidential nominee of the UPA settling at naming Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee
for the July 19 polls, a greatly relieved Prime Minister would be able to focus clearly on articulating not only the Indian stance, but also the aspirations of
the developing world in both the summits to ensure that the developed world did not isolate the emerging
economies for achieving sustainable development and green economy.
The visit would also be utilised by the Prime Minister to have one to one meetings with heads of countries like Germany and France besides neighbours
Sri Lanka and Nepal and other African and South American nations to further improve the bilateral relations. The Prime Minister would be having a tough schedule both at Los Cabos and Rio.
—UNi