New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed concern over the issues of terrorism and radicalisation in the “nearly five hours of quality time and discussion” they spent together in Mahabalipuram, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said in a late-night media briefing yesterday.“The two leaders held detailed discussions on their respective national vision,” said Gokhale. He added that Modi and Xi also discussed trade-related issues, including how to enhance bilateral trade volume; they also deliberated on the trade deficit and identified investment areas.
Gokhale said the issue of terror was taken up in the mostly one-to-one discussions as well. “There was an acknowledgement that both the countries are very complex and very diverse. The two leaders said that these are large countries and that radicalisation is a matter of concern to both and that both would work together so that radicalisation and terrorism did not affect our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic multi-religious societies,” he said.