Asia can stand up to rich nations: Gujral

Asia can stand up to rich nations: Gujral

NEW DELHI (Reuter): India said on Saturday that developing nations in Asia had the economic muscle to stand up to rich nations but that trade and investment ties in its neighborhood needed to be strengthened.

Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral said India and members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) had the resources and markets to compete with industrialized economies in the northern hemisphere.

"ASEAN and India, leave alone even Central Asia for the moment, put together we have surplus resources," Gujral told representatives of ASEAN member states at a seminar.

"We have manpower. We have scientific orientations, we have a market. So South-South cooperation now for the first time becomes a reality...That is a strategic partnership," he said.

The Indian foreign minister said the situation today contrasted with that of 1990, when developing countries gathered in Malaysia to discuss "South-South cooperation".

"We all thought perhaps we had neither the resources nor the money, so the only operational part would be that we get together and try to collectively negotiate with the North. But the North wouldn't look at us," he said.

He said a "new spirit" of confidence had since emerged, symbolized most recently at a November meeting in Harare of the Group of 15 Third World nations.

Gujral said India was looking to strengthen ties with both ASEAN and Central Asia to develop resources such as natural gas and enhance regional and global stability.

But the Indian minister said trade and investment between India and ASEAN was disappointing. ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and, since 1995, Vietnam. India is a "full dialogue partner".

Gujral said nine percent of India's global trade was with ASEAN members states, but ASEAN did only two percent of its foreign commerce with India.

"This is clearly an area in which a quantum leap is required," he said, urging ASEAN nations to invest in India's infrastructure sectors such as power, roads and ports.

He appealed to ASEAN to support India's efforts to join the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and be admitted to the Europe-Asia Meeting (ASEM), which includes the EU and ASEAN as well as China, Japan and South Korea.

India was excluded from last year's first ASEM meeting bringing together Asian nations and the European Union. EU and ASEAN foreign ministers are due to meet at two gatherings in Singapore in mid-February -- one of them under the ASEM umbrella.

"Perhaps we (India) are dispensable," Gujral said.

"With 980 million people of the world and one fifth of the population, we have nothing to worry about because I think we have enough confidence in ourselves," he said. "Thanks to our new cooperation between ASEAN and Central Asia, whether Europe wants us or not, we are self-contained now.