NEW DELHI, Jan 20: India is set to make its debut at the G7 next month, becoming only the third outside country to attend a meeting of the club of rich nations in a sign of its growing importance as a world economic power.

Asia's fourth-largest economy will attend talks with finance ministers of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations in London, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said on Thursday.

Russia and China will also be represented at the London meeting, whose British hosts, chairing the G7 this year, hope to put its focus on tackling Africa's debt problems and climate change.

Economists and diplomats say the invitation to New Delhi is a recognition of India's growing global economic clout and its arrival as an Asian economic superpower along with China.

China and India account for more than a third of the world's six billion people but only four per cent and two per cent, respectively, of the global economy. "The post-Second World War reality is giving ground to the 21st century reality," said Saumitra Chaudhuri, an economist with domestic ratings agency ICRA and a member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's economic advisory council.

"It is a rewriting of history. This was there on the cards because the current G7 is not representative of the leading economies of the world if you exclude India and China."

"The key thing is that it is an important recognition of India's growing economic strength and its importance for the rest of the world," said Rajeev Malik, of JP Morgan in Singapore.

The G7 comprises the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Britain. Although not a full G7 member, Russia has been attending meetings of the group's finance ministers for several years. It participates in some of the G7 sessions. G7 plus Russia is sometimes referred to as G8.

China attended a dinner during the last G7 meeting in Washington in October. Some G7 members have been pressing for a wider representation at the group's meetings for some time.

"It doesn't make much sense for us to talk about the economy of the future without two countries (China and India) that are protagonists on the world stage," Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters at the annual G8 summit in June.

The London get-together is expected to begin with dinner on Feb 4 and hold its main talks the following day. India and China are members of the Group of 20 rich and emerging countries, which many analysts say deserves more say in global economic policy-making due to its broad representation. Inviting Beijing and Delhi to the London talks could thus be seen as building an institutional bridge between the G7 and G20. -Reuters