India expands scope of 'Look East' policy

Thursday, 04 September 2003, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: India is redefining its 'Look East' policy to include Australia, China and East Asia after having so far focused on Southeast Asian nations, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said Thursday. "India's 'Look East' policy has now entered its Phase-II... characterised by an expanded definition of 'East,' extending from Australia to China and East Asia with ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) as its core," he said. He was addressing the plenary session of the three-day, second India-ASEAN Business Summit here. Commerce ministers and about 2,000 businesspersons from the 10 ASEAN nations and 500 Indian businessmen are attending the summit. "Phase-II marks a shift in focus from exclusively economic issues to economic and security issues, including joint efforts to protect sea lanes, coordination on counter terrorism etc," he said. The second phase of the policy was also characterised by arrangements for free trade agreements (FTA) and establishing institutional economic linkages between the countries of the region and India, Sinha added. He said India was currently engaged in negotiations with Thailand for an FTA and with Singapore for a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement. He referred to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's announcement in his inaugural address to the business summit that the economic ministers of ASEAN and India had finalised the text of the "Framework Agreement on Economic Cooperation" that Indian and ASEAN leaders will sign at their summit in Bali, Indonesia in October. "This is truly a major breakthrough in economic cooperation that should significantly contribute towards the evolution of an increasingly integrated India-ASEAN economic space over the next 15-20 years," he said. He acknowledged that some of the ASEAN members had "hesitations and reservations" about this agreement, "but we hope that they would be convinced that this initiative is a long-term win-win initiative for all parties," he added.
Source: IANS
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