New Delhi: External
Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna will go to Vientiane, the capital of
Laos, next month to attend the 9th summit of the Asia-Europe
Meeting, a 49-member grouping that seeks to build diplomatic and
cultural bridges between the two continents.
Krishna is expected in Vientiane Nov 5 for the two-day ASEM summit
in Laos, official sources told IANS.
The ASEM summit, in one of least developed countries in Southeast
Asia, takes place against the backdrop of the larger shift of
economic power from the West to the rest which is epitomised by
the festering recession in the eurozone and the rising economic
weight of the Asian continent.
The meeting has an added significance for India as it will host
the next meeting of the ASEM foreign ministers - one of the
largest diplomatic events to be hosted by New Delhi in November
next year.
Underlining India's increasing stakes in the ASEM, a two-day
meeting of the board of governors of the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF),
the institutional arm of the ASEM which serves as an ideas
incubator, began in New Delhi Thursday. India is represented by
T.C.A. Raghavan, India's high commissioner to Singapore.
The ASEF board's meeting will explore new pathways of
collaboration in areas of public health, education and cultural
heritage, the sources said.
The ASEF also looks at issues like regulatory regimes for internet
governance, an issue that has found an added traction since a
movie debunking Islam was blitzed across the social media that
provoked some Islamist radicals to target the US consulate in
Benghazi last month.
The attack killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to
Libya. Ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting in Laos, finance
ministers and top officials from India and other countries are
likely to meet in Bangkok on Oct 14-15 to explore ways for sharing
Asia's dynamic growth with Europe and the rest of the world.
ASEM, an inter-regional forum, consists of, among others, the
European Commission, the 27 members of the European Union (EU),
the thirteen members of the ASEAN plus 3 (Japan, South Korea and
China) regional grouping, India, Mongolia, and Pakistan,
Australia, Russia and New Zealand. India joined ASEM in 2007.
The ASEF has as its motto "connected histories and shared future"
and was founded in 1997, a year after the leaders of twenty-five
European and East Asian countries, together with the European
Commission, convened in Bangkok, Thailand, for the inaugural
Asia-Europe Meeting.
ASEF, which seeks to promote greater mutual understanding between
Asia and Europe through intellectual, cultural and
people-to-people exchanges, has completed 500 projects so far,
bringing together more than 15,000 direct participants in Asia and
Europe.
India is among top contributors to the ASEF after Japan and the EU.
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