India, ASEAN moot free trade agreement

Tuesday, 05 November 2002, 20:30 IST
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PHNOM PENH: At their first summit held in this Cambodian capital Tuesday, India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) drew up an ambitious plan to sign a free trade agreement within 10 years to strengthen their economic and trade links. A task force, which is already engaged in identifying areas for intensified economic linkages between India and the ASEAN, will be entrusted with the job of drawing up the roadmap for the agreement within a 10-year framework, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said. The progress on this will be reviewed at the next summit to be held in Bali, Indonesia in October next year, Sinha told reporters after the summit meeting between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the 10 ASEAN leaders. The task force, co-chaired by India and Malaysia, was set up at the Brunei meeting of the ASEAN economic ministers in September. India had attended the meeting as a full dialogue partner. The decision to formulate an India-ASEAN free trade agreement came a day after a similar decision was taken between China and ASEAN, but Sinha denied that the two were linked. "We are not in competition with any country or any group of countries," he asserted. He also denied that slow progress on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) agenda had prompted New Delhi to look towards ASEAN. "Ï don't think any of our actions here is guided by the situation obtaining in SAARC," he maintained. Asked if ASEAN was wooing India as a counterweight against China's growing influence in the region, Sinha said the question should be directed to the ASEAN leaders. Sinha said the first summit was held in an "exceptionally warm and cordial atmosphere." After Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen recalled the historic, civilizational and cultural links between India and the ASEAN countries, Vajpayee thanked the ASEAN leaders for agreeing to the summit-level dialogue with India. He made out a case for strengthening the economic ties between the two sides, saying they were inadequate and did not reflect the true potential. He referred to the assistance and help India had been rendering to the four new and least developed members of the ASEAN - Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam - in various fields and called for business-to-business contacts to strengthen trade ties. In this connection, he emphasized the need for liberalizing visa regimes to make travel for businessmen easier and hassle-free. He complimented Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri for her handling of the terrorist attack in Bali last month that left nearly 200 people dead and spoke about the need to exchange intelligence on terrorist activities between India and the ASEAN.
Source: IANS