China is upbeat on the prospects of trilateral cooperation with India and Russia and said that the ties are transparent and not targeted at any third country.

"China attaches importance to and actively participates in the trilateral cooperation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu said in Beijing.

"We believe that the 6th Foreign Ministers' Meeting of China, Indian and Russia in New Delhi on February 14 will achieve the expected result and promote the trilateral cooperation in relevant fields," she said.

"The cooperation among the three is constructive and transparent without targeting at any third party," Jiang emphasised, signaling China's eagerness not to upset the United States, with which it want to maintain good relations.

The second, stand-alone meeting of the Foreign Ministers of India, Russia and China -- Pranab Mukherjee, Sergei Lavrov and Li Zhaoxing -- will take place in New Delhi on February 14.

The first such meeting of the three foreign ministers took place in Vladivostok, Russia in June 2005. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao had the first Summit-level meeting in the trilateral framework in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in July 2006, on the sidelines of the G-8 summit.

The then Russian prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov during a visit to New Delhi in 1998, first mooted the trilateral relationship between India, China and Russia.

Jiang pointed out that China, India and Russia are friendly to each other and have established strategic partnership.

"The three countries take economic development as the current major task. Highly complementary to each other in cooperation, the three are all countries of impact and share identical or similar positions on a series of major international and regional issues," she noted.

"The strengthening of communication and coordination among the three countries in the international arena and cooperation in economic and other fields is conducive to their own development and the maintenance of peace and stability of the region and the world at large. It enjoys a broad prospect," she commented.

Welcoming the holding of the trilateral meeting of foreign ministers, noted Chinese scholar on South Asia Sun Shihai noted that the three countries should cooperate in the establishment of a multi-polar world, democratisation of international relations and expand the role of the United Nations in international affairs.

Sun, deputy director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also said that both China and India, dependent on imported energy resources for their economic growth, should enhance cooperation with oil-rich Russia.

At the same time, the trilateral cooperation should not to targeted at any third country, he stressed noting that all the three countries wanted to have good relations with the United States.