Jaswant not to attend ASEAN meetings

By Amit Baruah

SINGAPORE, JULY 18. The External Affairs and Defence Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, will not be attending the ASEAN Post- Ministerial Conference (PMC) and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meetings scheduled to take place in Hanoi next week.

It will be for the first time that Mr. Singh will be giving these important meetings a miss - he has attended all the three previous sessions which took place in Manila, Singapore and Bangkok.

According to informed sources, the External Affairs Minister will be busy with the upcoming Parliament session and, hence, cannot attend these meetings in Hanoi. The sources said that a ``suitable Minister'' would be attending both the ASEAN PMC as well as the ARF sessions.

Clearly, with the External Affairs Minister holding the Defence portfolio as well, his presence in Parliament will be required. However, at a time when India is engaged in a hectic process of engagement with South-East Asia, Mr. Singh's presence in Hanoi, too, will be missed.

In fact, the ARF session, particularly, will be crucial given the fact that Mr. Singh holds the Defence portfolio as well. These meetings also provide an occasion for one-on-one meetings with Foreign Ministers of different countries.

The US Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Ms. Makiko Tanaka, and the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Tang Jiaxuan, will be among those in Hanoi for the meetings next week.

Apart from the PMC session (all dialogue partners have separate meetings with the ASEAN-10 to discuss in depth the relationship the regional grouping has with individual dialogue partners), the Ministerial meeting of the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) will also be held in Hanoi.

It may be recalled that the MGC, which has India, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam as members, was launched in November last year in Vientiane largely at India's initiative.

Since India became a full dialogue partner, India's participation in ASEAN forums has been at the top-level. In July 1996, Mr. I.K. Gujral attended the ASEAN PMC/ARF meetings while Mr. P. Chidambaram as Finance Minister represented the country in 1997.

Since then, Mr. Jaswant Singh has attended all annual ASEAN PMC and ARF meetings - in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

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Section  : International
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