Ties with neighbours poised for positive transformation: India
17 January 2007
New Delhi (PTI): Rejecting the notion that it was seeking hegemony in the region, India on Tuesday said its relations with neighbours, including China and Pakistan, are poised for a "positive transformation" and favoured enhanced trans-border connectivity and trade to push the ties further.
External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said India was also building its relations with major powers and noted that the civil nuclear deal with the US had put the country on the "verge of liberating" itself from high-technology blockade.
The US initiative, backed by other major powers like Russia, France, UK, acknowledges the importance of resuming civilian nuclear cooperation with India and the centrality of this country in the construction of a credible non-proliferation system, he said while launching the 'Global India Foundation' here.
Observing that India's relations with major powers are improving simultaneously, he said the engagement with extended neighbourhood - from South East Asia to Southern Africa - has become at once intense and broad-ranging.
Mukherjee said Indian policy with regard to the immediate neighbourhood, has "often been misconstrued as a search of hegemony" and "we have also often been accused of treating South Asia as an Indian sphere of influence."
India's primacy in South Asia is based on demography and geography, the External Affairs Minister said.
New Delhi's commitment to develop political relations with its neighbours on the basis of "sovereign equality and mutual respect," he said, adding this is underlined by the recent decision to upgrade the 1949 Friendship Treaty with Bhutan and willingness to review the 1950 treaty with Nepal.
He also referred to India's support to the entry of China and Japan into the SAARC as Observers, saying it underlines New Delhi's commitment to open regionalism in the sub-continent.
Pointing out that for long South Asian countries have been sharing little but poverty, Mukherjee said "the real opportunity in South Asia today is the prospect for shared prosperity between India and her neighbours."
Due to high growth rates across the sub-continent, he said the countries of the region are in a position to advance together through free trade, open borders and regional economic integration.
"Trans-border transport and energy corridors would not only link the sub-continent within itself but also with the abutting regions of South East Asia of South East Asia, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf," he said. India, on its part, is determined to open markets to the neighbours, he remarked.
Mukherjee said India is conscious of the fact that no South Asian nation can succeed on its own and believes that "we must create a stake for every nation in the economic success of the other." While preparing to host the SAARC Summit, India will take the initiative in accelerating regional economic and political cooperation, the Minister said.
New Delhi will also play a positive role in deepening Asian economic integration as well as the establishment of new trans-border transport networks and energy pipelines with its eastern neighbours.
"Developing liberal trading regimes, better connectivity and economic integration with our north-western neighbours, Pakistan and Afghanistan, central Asia, West Asia and Africa are now high priorities for my government," he said.
Talking about the economic strides made by developing countries over the last few decades, Mukherjee said China and India are now poised to "break the old paradigms that animated us so much in the past: developed versus developing countries, North versus the South and East versus the West."
He said the unfolding rise of China and India has resulted in more than a resurgence of Asia and consequences of rapid growth in the two countries are being felt in Africa and Latin America.
"The end of the Cold War has liberated India to simultaneously deepen our relations with all the major power centres," he said, adding "we are no longer bound by the Cold War paradigm where good relations with one power automatically entailed negative consequences with its rivals."
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