Osaka (Japan), June 29 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday highlighted the global challenge posed by terrorism and pressed for an international conference on the issue, as he met Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin under the trilateral Russia-India-China (RIC) forum here.

The three leaders also discussed how to increase trilateral cooperation among them and tasked their officials to follow up on their discussions. On terrorism, Prime Minister Modi said it is a global challenge and must be collectively fought by the international community, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters after the meeting on the sidelines of G20 Summit. Modi pointed out that he has called for organizing an international conference to discuss how to combat terrorism and was sure that China and Russia would support the initiative, Gokhale added. Giving details of the deliberations, he said the three leaders also discussed multilateral challenges and emphasized that these should be dealt with through the established institutions, instead of "unilateralism". They also underscored the need for opposing the tendency towards protectionism in commerce and pushed for reform of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), keeping in mind the needs of the developing countries and least developed nations, Gokhale said. "All three leaders agreed that in an era of economic and global change, it is important to maintain the trend of globalization, a free rule-based trading system, to oppose tendency towards protectionism," the Foreign Secretary said. The three leaders also agreed to continue the practice of holding the informal trilateral meetings on the sidelines of multilateral forums.