During his trip the minister will meet with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and have talks with Foreign Minister Natvar Singh and Defence Minister Pranab Mukerjee.
The talks are expected to deal with the present state of Russian-Indian cooperation and its future prospects, and a number of current international issues, Alexander Yakovenko, an official Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, told RIA Novosti.
One of the main aims of the trip is to prepare a visit to India by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December of this year.
According to Yakovenko, Moscow and New Delhi are now conducting an intensive and trustful dialogue. He expressed confidence that Lavrov's present visit will make a big contribution to the strengthening of cooperation between countries.
The sides are expected to discuss measures for promoting international and bilateral cooperation on an anti-terrorist and an anti-drug track, and also for creating a firm international legal base for the fight against religious extremism and separatism.
A lot of attention at the forthcoming negotiations will be paid to the situation in South Asia. Moscow welcomes the development of Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and looks to it providing a basis for reinforcing mutual understanding and fully normalising relations between the two countries, Yakovenko indicated.
An important part of the talks will be a discussion of cooperation in the military-technical field. Kanval Sibal, the Indian ambassador to Russia, told RIA Novosti that this coordination of efforts concerns the ground troops, the navy and the air force. He pointed out that present-day military-technical cooperation between India and Russia is at a higher level than in the Soviet days.
The aim today is to go beyond the limits of imports and take part in joint studies and development and also in an exchange of technologies. India attaches priority significance to this aspect of cooperation, the ambassador said.
Issues of bilateral Russian-Indian relations to be discussed will also include the theme of economic links. The sides consider their level to be slightly behind the level of political contacts and are drawing up measures to increase volumes of trade, improve its commodity structure and create favourable conditions for more investments, production cooperation, and strengthening of contacts between small and medium-sized businesses, the ambassador noted.
