Keynote
Address by
H.E. Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand
On the occasion of the Hindustan Times
Conference on
“India and the World : A Blueprint
for Partnership and Growth”
at the session : Regional Cooperation
for Growth and Prosperity”
Saturday, 6 November 2004
New Delhi, INDIA
…………………..
Your
Excellency Mr. Natwar Singh, Minister of
External Affairs of India,
Distinguished
participants,
Ladies
and Gentlemen
I would like to thank Mr.Vir Sanghvi
for the kind introduction.
It is always an honour and a pleasure to be back
in New Delhi. My last visit was in June, a few
days after the new Indian Government took office and I believe
mine was the first visit of an ASEAN Foreign Minister.
At that time, I had the opportunity to learn from
the great wisdom of H.E. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
shared with my colleague Minister of External Affairs Natwar
Singh a strong desire to broaden and deepen our partnership
on bilateral, regional and international issues.
For a thousand of years, Thailand
and India
have been connected
by historical and cultural ties. In language, faith, belief,
custom, traditions, and literature, we share historical
roots. In trade, our merchants and tradesmen have fared
prosperously over many centuries. In our way of life, so
much of our Thai everyday life can be traced back to Indian
origin. The BodhGaya in the State of Bihar where I had the
chance to visit and pay respect yesterday, is one of the
most reverent places where most Thai people would long to
visit at least once in their life time. There, I had the
honour of presenting His Majesty the King of Thailand’s
Kathina robe to the Thai Temple.
Our common heritage
and cultural affinity continue to bind our
peoples together and have created a sense of family amongst us.
India is and has always been recognized
as a cradle of Asian civilization. In the past and in the
present, we continue to value India’s
leading role in building
a stronger Asia as well
as her role in multilateral system.
So today, the Hindustan Times has
done a great service in helping to reinforce and enhance
the role of India and the
world. This
Conference provides a platform for an intellectual debate
on India’s role in the world of the 21st
century where the strategic landscape has changed tremendously. India’s
role and contribution in the new strategic landscape will
not only benefit herself, but also Asia
and the rest of the world. This conference is also timely
as we are preparing for the ASEAN-India Summit in Vientiane,
Laos,
at the end of this month where it will be another platform
for India’s role in Southeast
Asia.
Today, I wish to share with you India's importance in realizing what would be the
ultimate aspiration for all of us in Asia:
our Asian community. I just cannot emphasize enough the
leadership role that India has to play
in the process of strengthening Asia-wide cooperation for
mutual growth and prosperity. There can never be an overstatement
on how India can indeed complement and add value to cooperative
endeavours for sustainable development and mutual prosperity
in our region of Asia and
the world at large. I would take the opportunity to examine
how emerging networks and building blocks of sub-regional
cooperation in Asia, including the linkages and bridges
between them, can help forge a stronger sense of community
within Asia and reinforce
the foundations of multilateralism.
Distinguished
participants,
The debate on the opportunities and challenges of
globalization continues to be a recurring theme. Globalization
brings benefits to some and sufferings to others. Developing
countries are grappling with the present-day realities arising
from globalization. To cope with globalization is to learn
to manage its impacts. To manage its impacts is to understand
that globalization is human creation, human-made so it must
be human-manageable for the benefit of all mankind.
The borderless world of globalization brings about
the free flow of people, free flow of goods and services,
free flow of financial funds and the free flow of information
technology. And as long as we benefit from them we all seemed to take them for granted until, one day,
we run ourselves into crises such as that of the 1997 Asian
financial crisis, the 9/11 tragedy, the scourge of
epidemics such as SARS and the Bird Flu, as well
as the surge in oil prices. Then we started to learn how
to manage the dark side of globalization.
We learn to seek a new paradigm of thinking on how
to survive, how to grow, how to develop, and how to sustain
prosperity for the welfare of our peoples. In Asia,
we learn not to fall victims of the dark side of globalization
any more. We learn to turn our abundant resources, our differences
and our diversity, our richness in population, reserves
and savings into our strength, into harmony, into unity,
into stability and into prosperity. And India
today is so well placed to help create such strength, harmony,
unity, stability, and prosperity for Asia.
However, when we look at growth and prosperity of
Asia, East and Southeast Asia
loom large. The economic dynamism of Japan, the Republic
of Korea and the
emergence of China as the growth engines of Asia
are more than apparent. In Southeast
Asia, ASEAN is implementing its ASEAN Free Trade
Arrangement or AFTA. ASEAN is expanding the free trade arrangements
with several major trading partners such as Japan,
China, Korea
and India.
ASEAN has even agreed to move towards the realization of
an ASEAN Community comprised of security, economic, and
socio-cultural pillars by the year 2020. At the end of this
month, the ASEAN Leaders at their Summit
will adopt the Plan of Action on security and socio-cultural
pillars having already adopted last year the economic pillar
in realizing this goal.
Beyond that goal, ASEAN is also working
towards the East Asian Community comprising the 10 ASEAN
members and China, Japan,
and the Republic
of Korea.
The movement towards an East Asian Community will have wide-ranging
and long-term impact in Asia and beyond.
However, it cannot be right and should not be right
to assume that Asia’s growth engine is found only in East
Asia. Indeed, we must look at all other parts
of Asia, particularly South Asia, and encourage them to
become another engine of growth too if our eyes are on the
future strength, harmony, unity, stability and prosperity
of Asia.
Here, in South Asia, the growth of South
Asia is to encourage the progress of SAARC.
And hardly need I say that for SAARC to gain a momentum
and greater progress, India does play an indispensable role.
India’s
recent role in revitalizing SAARC and in holding dialogue
with Pakistan has moved
this South Asian grouping forward.
The more rapid growth of South Asia and SAARC is
both desirable and imperative for the people of South Asia
as much as for Asia as
a whole.
Asia’s strength should not depend on the lopsided prosperity
balance. It may be the fact for the time being that East
and Southeast Asia are growing faster than other parts of
Asia but we must not let
them run away with their economic growth and prosperity.
Asia cannot afford to have its growth over-concentrated
on one part of the continent, leaving others dragging so
far behind if Asia is to
realize its aspiration for an Asian community.
That is why Thailand
recognizes the importance of South Asia, and its important
role towards an Asia community. Thailand
recognizes the necessary linkages between South Asia and
Southeast Asia in order
to create inter-sub-regional partnership. With Prime Minister
Thaksin’s “prosper thy neighbour” and “think beyond Thailand”
approaches, we understand the need to bridge the development
gap in a faster, more concrete and sustainable manner not
for the benefit of Thailand but for the benefit of all.
At home, we have been doing it with our adjacent
neighbours of ASEAN. Thailand is bridging the development gap between
the old and the new ASEAN members under a new initiative
of economic cooperation strategy known as ACMECS between
Thailand
and Myanmar,
Laos, Cambodia
and Viet
Nam. Initiated by Thailand
last year, we hope that ACMECS will accelerate the narrowing
of development gap between the old ASEAN members and the
new ASEAN members as well as leaving the latter with lasting
and sustainable development.
And
with South Asia, we must create the bridge to narrow that
gap between South Asia and Southeast
Asia through the Bay of Bengal Initiative for
Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation or BIMSTEC.
This framework brings together Bangladesh,
Bhutan,
India, Nepal,
and Sri Lanka
from South Asia on one hand, and Thailand
and Myanmar
from Southeast Asia, on the other. Thailand
hosted BIMSTEC first ever Summit in Bangkok
in July. The BIMSTEC leaders gave political impetus for
the free trade arrangement among the seven countries as
well as adopted key cooperative projects initiated by India
in security, tourism and energy cooperation. We hope that BIMSTEC will serve effectively
as another inter-sub-regional building block towards an
Asian community. We look forward to the concretization of
the three key initiatives at the next BIMSTEC Summit in
India.
As for ASEAN and SAARC, the two organizations have
established a formal link and cooperation mechanism for
quite some time. But today, we need to see to it that the
ASEAN-SAARC cooperation is for real and it is given the
necessary impetus. At the Sixth ASEAN-SAARC Meeting
in New
York which I was honoured to co-chair
with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, we added a new dimension
to our cooperation. We identified key areas for cooperation,
namely HIV/AIDS prevention, transportation linkages, tourism
cooperation, and poverty alleviation, as well as the possibilities
in linking our respective free trade areas namely, AFTA
and SAFTA. I am convinced that ASEAN and SAARC have not
reaped enough benefits of our complementary potentials and
an ASEAN-SAARC Foreign Ministers’ meeting some time in the
near future would be a useful forum for the two regions
of Asia to chart our road to growth and prosperity and the
road that ultimately moves us towards an Asian community.
In both BIMSTEC and ASEAN-SAARC frameworks, I am
sure I need not reiterate the pivotal role of India
in pushing forward these endeavours.
Distinguished Participants,
Let
me turn your attention to more cooperation frameworks in
Asia.
In fostering
Asia-wide growth and prosperity, India
has a key role to play in
engaging other sub-regional frameworks such as the
Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures
in Asia or CICA. India’s prominent
role in CICA is evident. CICA aims at enhancing confidence
from differences, and at building a sense of security from
diversity and at strengthening a culture of peace and tolerance.
At the Second CICA Ministerial Meeting in Kazakhstan
only a few weeks ago, Thailand
has become the latest member of CICA and looks forward to
working closely with India and the
rest of CICA members.
If we look to the west of our continent, the Gulf
States Cooperation Council or GCC is also moving forward
as a solid building block in West Asia.
So if you ask what is happening in so far as regional cooperation
is concerned in Asia, I would say, clearly, Asia
is working on a number of regional and sub-regional arrangements.
They can all serve as building blocks for multilateralism.
But none of these building blocks truly has a continent-wide
coverage, at least until as recent as two and a half years
ago.
That leads me to turn to the ACD. The Asia Cooperation
Dialogue or ACD which Thailand
initiated in June 2002 is the first ever pan-Asia cooperation
forum to generate partnership and strength of Asia
from Asian diversity and differences. Here, again the role
and contribution of India as well as major Asian players such as Japan, China,
South
Korea and ASEAN is indispensable.
India
has shown keen interest and active participation in the
evolving process of the ACD from its inception. The ACD
serves to fill in the missing link between existing intra-Asian
cooperation arrangements. Now comprising 26 Asian members
spanning the breadth and length of Asia, the ACD members
represent members from ASEAN, SAARC, CICA, GCC as well as
China,
Japan
and the Republic of Korea. The ACD aims to tap into the inherent
strengths of Asian countries in order to yield mutual prosperity
and sustainable development.
This framework represents a new paradigm of cooperation.
The
ACD takes the form of annual ministerial dialogues and joint
projects in 18 areas of functional cooperation, ranging
from key issues of tourism to SMEs, energy security to agriculture,
and ICT to poverty alleviation. Participation in these projects
is on a voluntary basis, and on each member’s comfort level,
readiness and comparative advantage. In this way, everyone
has a sense of participation and willingness while no one
feels isolated or left behind. Each of the 18 projects has
between 10-15 participants.
But when put together, you will get a cobweb of 18
areas of cooperation with participation from all corners
of Asia. This is how we,
having recognized differences, build our strength based
on diversity.
India’s
commitment to the ACD is significant in moving forward the
ACD process. India plays an
active role as prime mover on biotechnology and transport
linkages. Under the framework of the ACD as agreed at its
second ministerial meeting in 2003, Thailand is working closely with India in the financial cooperation project, particularly
the development of an Asian bond market, which is the new
financial architecture for Asia,
initiated by my Prime Minister. The idea has gained increased
region-wide support through the ACD process, and has been
concretized with the creation of an Asian Bond Fund last
year. We expect a second Fund of ACD to be established in
local denominated currency. India
and Thailand’s
pledged contribution of US$ 1 billion to the Asian Bond
fund which is to be denominated in Asian currency, will
open up an opportunity for the wealth of Asia to be invested
in Asia for Asian wealth
and development. As India
emerges as a financial centre, we look forward to your role
in helping to strengthen the Asian Bond Market.
Distinguished
participants,
As Asia
seeks to reposition itself
in the international strategic
landscape, where continent-wide cooperation has emerged in
other continents, a call for an Asian community is by no
means premature. What is happening in Asia
today, intentionally or unintentionally, is the emergence
of
building blocks for a more effective multilateral system and
a continent-wide cooperation.
Our house of Asian community is, albeit slowly, being
built. Slowly as it may, it needs to be built firmly on
solid foundation and strong construction that is tailored
made to meet the needs and requirements for Asian prosperity.
Given India’s wealth of resources, her unique achievement
in building strength from diversity, her commitment to Asia,
and the role of India,
past and present in the making of Asia as I have described,
India should stand out as one of the
key pillars for building our Asian community.
Our house of Asian community can be build upon the
roof of ACD that has become our first continent-wide cooperation.
Our house of Asian community should be founded on the four
main pillars of China,
India,
Japan, and ASEAN.
Our house of Asian community must be built solidly by the four walls that consist of all the building
blocks in Asia, namely, the ASEAN plus 3 (China, Japan and
the Republic of Korea), the East Asian Community, SAARC,
BIMSTEC, CICA and GCC for instance.
Indeed, the initiative for building
an Asian community had been envisaged over half a century
ago by the Great Statesman, Shri Jawaharal Nehru, at the
"Asian Relations Conference" in 1947 where he
articulated on the theme “ A United Asia for World Peace”,
and I quote;
“ that the time had come for us, peoples
of Asia, to meet together,
to hold together, and to advance together.”
Fifty years on, we in Asia
are forging partnership from diversity to lay a strong foundation
for an Asian community. The vision of a new Asia
is now in its making.
Distinguished
participants,
As we look to the future and join hands with India to build a secure foundation
for an Asian community:
Let us realize an Asian community that secures the
blessings of peace and prosperity for all.
Let us realize an Asian community guided by compassion and non-discriminatory principles.
And let us realize that an Asian community
must contribute to building an even stronger and more effective
global system of multilateralism.
A new chapter of the history of Asia is being created today in every corner of our continent.
Asia, with its richness
and diversity, was for centuries the desire of the West
to take possession of. Asia, because of, as much as in spite of, its richness and
diversity, had been divided and deprived of the growth and
development it deserved. Asia,
abundant in its population, resources, culture and civilization,
has never been given a proper chance to reap benefits of
its own potential.
But today: no more! Asia has learnt our lessons in history. Asia
has learnt our lessons in globalization. Asia
has learnt our lessons through our crises. Today, Asia has
enough building blocks, pillars and roof to build a house
of Asian community, a community for growth
and prosperity for all Asia.
Our task today is to reinforce and strengthen our building
blocks, bridging the gap between them. Our task is to make
sure that the pillars are strong enough to support the house.
And our task is to make sure that the roof is big and wide
enough to give the coverage for the Asian community.
I thank you the Hindustan Times for its visionary
farsightedness in organizing this conference. By so doing,
you are already part of this new chapter of Asia.
I thank H.E. Natwar Singh, my Indian counterpart, for his
understanding, wisdom and commitment and I shall very much
look forward to listening to his speech in a short while.
Thank you for your attention.
