Wednesday, Dec 01, 2004
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VIENTIANE, NOV. 30. Taking a giant step forward in strategic ties, India and the 10 ASEAN countries today signed a historic partnership pact for peace, progress and shared prosperity, vowed to jointly fight international terrorism and decided to promote and facilitate cross-flows of foreign direct investment. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, who inked the `ASEAN-India Partnership for Peace, Progress and Shared Prosperity' pact with leaders of ASEAN countries at their 3rd annual summit here, said that India and the regional grouping must work together for a future of shared prosperity if the 21st century was to be the Asian century. Dr. Singh quoted the late Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru's speech at the Asian Relations Conference in 1947 that Asian leaders must work jointly to draft a new future.
Action plan
The agreement outlines a multi-pronged action plan for boosting trade, investment, tourism, culture, sports and people-to-people contacts. The leaders agreed to intensify efforts to combat international terrorism and other transnational crimes such as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human trafficking, particularly of women and children, sea piracy and money laundering. The powerful ASEAN grouping comprises Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei. India, along with China and other key countries, are dialogue partners of the grouping. They agreed to foster closer cooperation in reforming and democratising the United Nations and institutions under it by making them "more reflective of the contemporary realities." The four-page partnership accord and the nine-page action plan envisages their cooperation in multilateral fora, particularly the World Trade Organisation and in addressing common challenges of economic, food, human and energy security.
Anti-terror operations
The ASEAN nations also sought India's help for training their forces in dealing with anti-terrorism operations. Despite essentially being a trade promotion document, there is a strong anti-terror leaning to the agreement. So far, the security relationship with ASEAN has not included active training and joint exercises with an ASEAN grouping of anti-terror operatives, though at bilateral levels India has joint working groups on counter-terrorism with many members. India and ASEAN have pledged to "build institutional linkages for intelligence and information sharing, exchange of information and cooperation in legal and enforcement matters." The agreement also seeks to "explore developing anti-terrorism cooperation ."
PTI, ANI
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