Mr. Chairman,
Excellencies,
ladies and gentlemen,

It is indeed a signal honour for me to participate in this historic Post Ministerial Conference (PMC)) where India is joining this inner-circle of ASEAN’s friends and partners. We pledge to work with the ASEAN as Full Dialogue Partner to give real meaning and content to the prophecy and promise of the Asian century that is about to dawn upon us.

2. We are gratified at the strong support that our ASEAN friends gave us in electing us to be their Full Dialogue Partners and ARF participants and we thank them most sincerely

3. In a way, the Full Dialogue Partnership with ASEAN is a means of positively renewing our ancient affinities with South- East Asia. It re-establishes a kinship that is uniquely an ASEAN-India feature in the spectrum of ASEAN’s Full Dialogue Partnership. Where else have entire civilizations grown up in such proximity and symbiosis, sustaining, re-inventing and enriching each other over the vicissitudes of centuries? Where else have shored values, culture and tradition so naturally Permerted each other's consciousness. Most telling is the way the spiritual chords that are strung between South-East Asia and India resonate in the everyday life, joys and strivings of our peoples.

4. As India and South-East Asia went through a period of colonial domination, than was a weakening of these bonds. As a result of this discontinuity, even In the post-colonial period, our relations often tended to be derivative rather than direct. This is despite initiatives that were taken in the name of our common Asian personality and participation in the Non-aligned Movement. In fact, it was here in this beautiful country of Indonesia - in Bogor and in Bandung and m the capital of my country New Delhi that attempts were made to reawaken the greatness and solidarity of Asia. Wit was also the beginning of what India’s first Prime Minister and visionary Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru presaged for Asia, that is, "Looking into oneself, feeling a certain assurance, self-confidence, fear also, it may be - but on the whole finding oneself. The seeds of the idea that in matters of technical aid, economic and financial cooperation, trade, human resource development and cultural interchange, Asia would benefit from increasingly looking to itself without diminishing global engagement, were also sown at that time.

Finding Ourselves - ASEAN and India

5. In retrospect that was just the beginning of the re-entry, of Asia on to the world stage as a compelling actor. But it has taken nearly half a century for many of as in Asia to find ourselves as, in trying to reach our goals, we have followed different paths and have been conditioned by different circumstances and assumptions. In South-East Asia, the steady evolution of ASEAN as one of the most successful South-South groupings - political, diplomatic, economic and security related has shown the way to Asian resurgence through regional cooperation and concentration. They have also proved through their economic success stories, the validity of a uniquely Asian, trade and investment led high growth development model based on social consensus, political discipline and free enterprise.

6. We in India have had to operate on a more complex political, social and economic canvas in trying to deal with the problems of wide-spread poverty, under-developed infrastructure and meeting the basic needs of a large, and growing population. Our achievements, in the context of the pluralistic democratic and federal system that we followed have been significant. At the time of our independence, nearly two third of all Indians lived below the poverty line. Today this figure has come down to 19%. Our average life expectancy has more than doubled during this period. We have a diversified and well-developed industrial, agricultural and technological base which is being revitalized. Free rein is being given to our domestic industry to become competitive. We have sophisticated managerial, marketing, financial and distribution networks and are vying to be a key player on the information highway.

7. A marriage is being effected between our enormous, young and skilled human resource and R&D pool on one hand and global industry and trade on the other. Massive programmes - at the governmental business and NGO level have been launched to strengthen the physical and social infrastructure throughout our country. We have a thriving entrepreneurial culture and a remarkable record in peaceful democratic change, political stability and policy continuity. Economic reforms have further contributed to accelerating our GDP growth rate currently over 6.5% per annum toward generating 8-10 million jobs per annum, bringing about a rapid expansion of middle class consumers and fueling an unprecedented demand and production growth in all sectors of the economy. Our trade flows have surged to 30% per annum and in 1994-95 $68 billion, targeted to increase to $ 180-200 billion by 2001. FDI commitments since 1992 have been to the tune of $ 19 billion and most global majors have dropped their anchor here. We aim at $ 10 billion per year in FDI inflows in the next 5 years and would in turn facilitate domestic and external resource mobilisation by Indian companies.

8. It is not just a coincidence that the last few years of the upturn in India's relations with ASEAN took place at the same time as the significant liberalisation of the Indian economy. We in India, have been inspired by the remarkable economic progress achieved in South-East Asia and we know that we too must now run to keep pace. We realise that speed is risky but we are determined to turn risk into opportunity. In this, we would like to travel with our ASEAN kin on a journey of mutual cooperation, benefit and prosperity.

FDP and Look-East Policy - Shared Destiny

9. We see the Full Dialogue Partnership with ASEAN as the manifestation of our look-East destiny. This is because we are geographically inseparable, culturally conjoined and now more than ever before, economically and strategically interdependent and complementary. As the curtains of past misperceptions fall, there is mutual recognition of the rich harvest that can be reaped from moving from derived to more direct ASEAN-India relationship and dialogue. ASEAN is now in many ways the core of Asia's larger regional and global engagement - in South-East Asia and Indo-China, in East Asia, in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. India's partnership with ASEAN will have an impact on India's economic, political and security related involvement in these larger, concentric coalitions around ASEAN and, in turn, contribute to ASEAN's own objectives.

10. Looking East is not an attempt to detach ourselves from our own sub-region of South Asia or of looking away from the West. India has worked sincerely and in an enlightened manner to forge the SAPTA and will continue to make SAARC a strong and viable partnership in the South Asian region. My government is taking several initiatives in this regard. We also seek to increase our traditionally strong economic linkages with countries to the West including many of them that are ASEAN's dialogue partners. What look-East really means is that an outward looking India, is gathering all forces of dynamism - domestic and regional and is directly focussing on establishing synergies with a fast consolidating and progressive neighbourhood to its East in the Mother Continent of Asia.

Key Elements of Full Dialogue partnership

11. From this perspective, I would like to delineate key elements of our Full Dialogue Partnership with ASEAN:

- We are determined to ourselves in the use our millennial linkages as the emotive driving force for substantive development of ASEAN-India relations.

- We will build on the new and emerging commonalties and complementarities of political, security and economic goals, policies and strategies in the immediate and the long term.

- We will seek to fully understand and in turn explain our respective national interests on every issue and handle the partnership with pragmatic and consensus orientation, taking a leaf out of the ASEAN book.

- We see the Full Dialogue Partnership as a political and psychological watershed. We will firmly move over from a period of quiescence into a more activist phase and from an era of borrowed images and refracted perceptions to direct communication and proximate cognition in ASEAN-India relations.

- Our Sectoral Dialogue Partnership with ASEAN covered four sectors of maximum interest and complementarity - trade, investment, science and technology and tourism. We would like to move towards comprehensiveness in our partnership without losing focus. 'Ale would, therefore, propose two key sectors of cooperation - infrastructure and human resource development cross-referenced to the existing four sectors.

- We will go beyond what we have achieved in every aspect of our relations thus far, because we believe that we have barely skimmed the surface of the intrinsic potential that exists. We will, therefore, be forever scanning the ASEAN-India horizon to look at new areas of cooperation and innovative delivery mechanisms and methods that will invest the relationship with a special significance mid priority down the line.

- We wish to rally all actors - economic, technical, political, social - at home, in ASEAN, in East Asia and rest of the world to attain the full potential of ASEAN-India interaction. We will seek to promote high-level formal and informal political contacts and visits, official-level consultations in bilateral, ASEAN-related and multilateral fora, vigorous business-to-business interaction and match- making, focussed and frequent interchange between our academics, centres of learning and excellence and familiarisation drive to establish direct connectivities between our respective media, cultural and artistic communities.

Common Agenda - Strategic and Economic

12. In political and security terms, we would like the Full Dialogue Partnership and the ARF process to bring to the fore a certain congruity of world view and strategic interests between us. We, like ASEAN believe that a peaceful and secure environment, based on our defence preparedness and strategic outreach, is not merely a guarantor of territorial integrity and national sovereignty but enables us to focus our resources and energies on accelerated economic development. We share the ASEAN conviction that only a graduated, consensual and peaceful approach can help in resolving differences on sensitive. political and security issues. India can thus complement and supplement ASEAN’s own quest for establishing a stable, predictable and balanced political and security, order in the Asia-Pacific region. Being of the region, and yet with no history of direct involvement in the conflict of the region, we can be and we have every intention of being a constructive and stabilising factor for peace.

13. We believe we have a major and increasing economic stake in ASEAN. ASEAN markets provide additional avenues and incremental value for our exports of goods, services and manpower. ASEAN is a potential source of the raw materials, intermediates, manufactures and services that our huge economy targeted growing at nearly 7% per annum, is going to need and absorb. Our trade with ASEAN has grown at a dramatic pace of 60-100% in the last 3 years and now stands at over 5 billion dollars and compares well with some of the other Full Dialogue Partners. It is, however, obvious to both sides and our business communities that we can aim at a trebling of that by the year 2000-2001.

14. We would welcome ASEAN capital particularly in all areas of infrastructure development - ports and slapping, airports, civil aviation, power, telecommunication, roads, highways, railways and tourism. We would encourage collaboration between India and ASEAN in prospecting and development of hydrocarbons. We would like their involvement in agro-industries and food processing and in the development of industrial estates and technology parts. We are willing to consider integrated packages and follow, "a hub approach" when circumstances so demand in order to engage ASEAN business more actively and decisively in India. In terms of intra-industry collaboration and production mobility, we look forward to becoming part of the East and South-East Asian Flying Geese formation.

15. In recent years, ASEAN investors have become prominent in the Indian FDI picture, equalling and even surpassing some of our traditional partners from developed countries. Similarly, we attach special importance to our MNCs investing in South- East Asia and making full use of their locational advantage to benefit from the AFTA, the ASEAN Free Services, Investment and Industrial Cooperation initiatives and Asia-Pacific networking as well as from the software of globalisation that ASEAN have developed and become purveyors of. We would encourage our entrepreneurs to participate in and to garner a share in the activities linked to intra-regional and trans-regional projects such as those related to the Mekong Basin initiative and Asia-Europe Railway Network, where possible, in partnership with their ASEAN counterparts.

16. Of the some 15 million people of Indian origin living outside India, some 3 million are in South-East Asia. They have contributed to the South-East Asian miracle with their intellect, their ingenuity and enterprise as well as with their sweat and toil. The Full Dialogue Partnership is a beacon to our Indian origin brethren in South-East Asia to spread enlightenment about ASEAN in India and about the new India in ASEAN. They can be initiators as well effective channels for trade and investment flows between India and ASEAN. Whilst NRIs are an additional and special factor and source for augmentation of ASEAN-India trade and investment, contribution of all communities of ASEAN will find a warm welcome in India.

17. Mr. Chairman, we know that ASEAN, like India, is at the national and regional level, an epitome of unity and diversity We would, therefore, like, to strengthen our bilateral relations with individual ASEAN countries and South-East Asia-Ten, taking fully into account their specific context. With those ASEAN, countries Ave already have significant relations, we would like to be ambitious and take them to unprecedented heights and levels of intensity. With those ASEAN countries where the relationship is not as profound, new efforts and beginings will be made. We will, at the same time, seek greater interface with ASEAN-wide institutions, structures and arrangements.

18. Mr. Chairman, by joining the community of nations that the ASEAN and their Full Dialogue Partners represent, we are in a sense entering a second phase of Asian resurgence - one in which cooperation with a dynamic South-East Asia will help us channelise what Pandit Nehru referred 50 years ago "as powerful, creative, impulses mid a new vitality, in all the peoples of Asia". We have seen strong winds of change and progress blowing all over South-East Asia and the world and we wish to have faith in these "great new forces and the dream that is taking shape". Also, I sincerely believe that we together, can translate our robust determination to succeed and bring happiness and prosperity to our people through friendship, respect for the interests of each other and cooperation with other great nations and continents of this increasingly inter-dependent globe.