BackSushma Swaraj to visit Myanmar this week
India seeks to strengthen ties with Myanmar, seen as a bridge between India and Southeast Asia
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New Delhi: In keeping with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s neighbourhood-first foreign policy, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj will visit Myanmar later this week aiming to strengthen ties with a country seen as a bridge between India and Southeast Asia.
Swaraj’s 8-11 August visit is her fourth to a country in India’s immediate neighbourhood. Besides accompanying Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Bhutan on his first overseas visit in June, Swaraj has paid bilateral visits to Bangladesh and Nepal.
However, a meeting between Swaraj and Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is doubtful because the latter would be in Yangon for the duration of the visit, foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said.
Immediately after her arrival in Naypyidaw, Swaraj will be pre-occupied with multilateral engagements with a series of meetings related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), according to a schedule outlined by Akbaruddin.
On 9 August, Swaraj will attend a meeting of Asean foreign ministers and its dialogue partners that Myanmar will be hosting as chair of the 10- member high growth Southeast Asian grouping, Akbaruddin said.
The following day, Swaraj will sit down with the foreign ministers of Asean countries and those of China, Japan, South Korea, the US, Russia, Australia and New Zealand— collectively also known as the East Asia Summit grouping. On the afternoon of 10 August, Swaraj will hold talks with ministers at the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), a consultative grouping of Asean, and its dialogue partners that discusses political and security issues.
With Asean hoping to coalesce itself into an economic community, India is looking for partners like Myanmar to deepen its economic linkages with the grouping. Ties between India and the Asean have gained “critical mass" and India was now looking to push ties to the next level with connectivity with Asean countries being the key theme, Akbaruddin said.
Together, India and the Asean—which groups together Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia—constitute a community of 1.8 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of $3.8 trillion.
India and the Asean have had a free-trade agreement in goods since 2009 that saw a surge in commerce between two sides. Trade between the bloc and India reached $80 billion in 2011-12. In 2012, India and the Asean set a trade target of $100 billion by 2015 and $200 billion by 2022. With India looking to increase the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product from its current level of 16% to 25% by 2022 and create jobs for its youth, the country has been making efforts to cement linkages with the Asean.
The Asean group on its part is eager to build stronger ties with India given that many of its member states have disputes with China over islands in the South China Sea. During an India-Asean commemorative summit held in New Delhi in December 2012, almost all Asean member states, barring Cambodia and Laos, called for closer India-Asean strategic ties.
The visit to Naypyidaw will also give Swaraj the opportunity to hold bilateral talks with the foreign ministers of China, Australia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippine and Canada, Akbaruddin said.
The foreign ministry spokesman did not rule out the possibility of Swaraj raising with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi the issue of repeated incursions by Chinese troops into Indian territory.
On the bilateral leg of her visit to Myanmar, Swaraj will meet her Myanmarese counterpart U Wunna Maung Lwin and call on president Thein Sein. The talks agenda includes border management and the construction of a highway linking India with Thailand through Myanmar, Akbaruddin said.
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