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Jaswant to visit Russia later this month: AFP

Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh will visit Russia later this month for bilateral talks, foreign ministry spokesman R S Jassal said on Monday. Singh would visit Moscow in the third week of June, but exact details will be announced later, he said.

The upcoming trip is in connection with a planned state visit to India in October by Russian president Vladimir Putin. "Besides holding bilateral talks in Moscow, our foreign minister will also discuss the scheduled trip here by the Russian president later this year," an official source said.

India hopes Putin's visit would result in an accord for strategic partnership. Both countries have said they attach great significance to the October visit. The two governments enjoy close ties and are bound by long-term trade, friendship and defence treaties.

After the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia remained the largest supplier of military hardware to India -- 70 per cent of India's arsenal, including warplanes, tanks and naval ships, are of Soviet or Russian origin.

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