Elaborating on India’s principled stand on the South China Sea issue, he said that the lanes of communication passing through the sea were “main arteries of global merchandise trade”.
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Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, whose country holds the rotating ASEAN chair, said Wednesday that ASEAN and China had established effective dialogue mechanisms and cooperative relations between the two sides were growing stronger. “Competing geo-politics, traditional and non-traditional challenges threaten peace, stability and prosperity of region”, he said at the Summit, which he was attending for the third time.
On East Asia Summit, the Prime Minister said, it is the premier forum for discussions on the challenges and opportunities before the Asia Pacific region.
“India will remain steadfast in the shared pursuit of regional, strategic political and economic priorities within the East Asia Summit framework”, Modi said. “India supports freedom of navigation based on ÚNCLOS”, he added. The meeting was “extremely warm and cordial”, Swarup said after the meeting.
ASEAN is a strategic partner of India since 2012. On the sidelines, the Prime Minister will hold bilateral meetings with several leaders.
Mr Lee noted that Japan is one of Asean’s oldest dialogue partners and an important one, and that the two sides have broad-based cooperation in diverse areas such as disaster management, maritime security, education and tourism.
Stating that cooperation in science and technology was a crucial element of India-Asean developmental engagement, he proposed to enhance the Asean-India Fund with an additional grant of $50 million. This could be their last meeting as leaders of the two countries with Obama’s second term as US President coming to an end in November.
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The India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit will be attended by the leaders of 10 southeast Asian nations – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand.
