Almost 2 billion people from India, ASEAN will help strengthen ties: Malaysian FM

INTERNATIONAL DESK: Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah on Thursday said the unique features of India combined with ASEAN countries can help strengthen the partnership between the two regions.

Addressing the Ministerial Session of Delhi Dialogue, he said both sides will resolve to strengthen and widen strategic partnerships including on the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific.

“This year is the India-ASEAN friendship year. And this is to commemorate the India-ASEAN partnership. This morning, we had a very fruitful India-ASEAN Foreign Minsters’ meeting. We resolve to strengthen and widen our strategic partnership including on the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific,” the Minister said.

“There are unique features from India combined with ASEAN that will strengthen our partnership. Just calculate the number of people in India and Indonesia and pulls the whole of ASEAN. It’s almost 2 billion people. And the technology. India has the edge as a partner that can be of a lot of assistance,” he added.

Underscoring the timing of this dialogue, he said, “…we are discussing building bridges at a time when identity and nationalist politics threaten to itch out values of moderation and tolerance.”

“We have conflicts in our region and beyond our region. Identity politics, religious extremism and hypernationalism are making both traditional and non-traditional security challenges or building on traditional and non-traditional challenges,” he added.

India and ASEAN countries on Thursday agreed to deepen strategic partnership across the whole spectrum of political, security and economic and development cooperation as the two sides commemorated the 30th Anniversary of ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations.

The Special ASEAN-India Foreign Ministers’ Meeting was held in New Delhi today to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations in 2022 which has been designated as the ASEAN-India Friendship Year.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Singapore Foreign Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan co-chaired the meeting.

The meeting agreed to further strengthen and deepen the ASEAN-India Strategic Partnership for mutual benefit, “across the whole spectrum of political, security, economic, socio-cultural and development cooperation by utilizing relevant existing ASEAN-led mechanisms”. (ANI)