India and the ASEAN gambit

India and the ASEAN gambit

The importance of a positive ambience for ASEAN's exchanges
with India cannot be exaggerated. It is worth recalling how ASEAN
had taken a dim view of the nuclear weaponization experiments
that India conducted in May 1998. At an ARF meeting held in
Manila about two months later in the same year, India made a
dramatic pitch for a confidence-building measure by offering to
acknowledge and respect the sanctity of Southeast Asia as a
nuclear-weapons-free zone. If, however, India has not yet been
able to accede to a relevant protocol, the reason simply is that
ASEAN's prevailing diplomatic culture and existing mechanisms
call for such a commitment by the five designated nuclear powers
and not India or Pakistan. Yet, peace between India and Pakistan
is a matter of abiding importance to ASEAN in the larger regional
and global context.

India's "look East" policy, whose centerpiece consists of the
relationship with ASEAN and its sub-regions, has for most part
remained a matter of high intentions. Yet, some definitive new
beginnings may take shape. Mr. K. C. Pant, India's chief delegate
to the meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the annual
dialogue with the South East-Asian outfit, has now offered to
intensify New Delhi's interactions with ASEAN in the information
technology sector (IT), a well recognized area of India's
strength.

In line with the normal practices of ASEAN, its latest
ministerial-level meetings were dominated by economic issues. On
the political front, ASEAN remained eager to fashion a code of
conduct in the South China Sea and reaffirmed that peace in East
Asia would depend on the triangular power-equation involving the
U.S., China and Japan. Not surprisingly, the U.S.-China
engagement was the bilateral event that attracted the greatest
attention on the sidelines of the latest ARF meeting in Hanoi.

Now, although India is generally seen as a factor for
stability in South-East Asia, ASEAN surely has many political
considerations to sort out before it can respond positively to
New Delhi's bid to engage the association in summit-level talks
in the manner of China, Japan and South Korea.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi