12-12-2003, 05:32 PM
Let Bharat take the leadership role for constituting an Indian Ocean community -- start with Indian Ocean cultural community, then on to Indian Ocean Economic Community, Indian Ocean Strategic Community. Welcome to the seminar in Chennai on 26 Dec. 2003 at CP Ramaswamy Aiyar Foundation 10 AM to 5 PM. organized by Indian Ocean Studies and Research Group in association with other co-sponsors. IOSRG was inaugurated on 29 October 2003.
Kalyanaraman
PM for open borders, single currency in South Asia
December 12, 2003 16:08 IST
Urging South Asian nations to put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Friday said he envisaged mutual security cooperation, open borders and even a single currency in the region in the long run.
He called for promotion of peace in South Asia and cited the increased people-to-people contact between India and Pakistan as a reflection of an "intense desire for amity and goodwill."
Vajpayee was inaugurating a two-day conference on 'Peace Dividend -- Progress for India and South Asia' organised by Hindustan Times newspaper in New Delhi.
He said the demands of globalisation and aspirations of people provided the objective basis for energetic pursuit of a "harmoniously integrated" South Asia. People, businesses and organisations are waiting to interact more closely with each other.
They have waited for over half-a-century for fulfillment of "unexploited potential in their own neighbourhood" and were now impatient to move ahead, Vajpayee told a distinguished audience that included former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, union ministers, envoys of several countries and others.
The prime minister said, "We can sense this impatience in the outpouring of popular sentiment after our initiatives. The increased travel between India and Pakistan of parliamentarians, businessmen, artists and sportsmen show the intense desire for amity and goodwill. We have to respond to this desire by seeking every possible way to banish hostility and promote peace."
Welcoming the guests, Hindustan Times Vice-Chairperson and Editorial Director Shobhana Bhartia said the conference was an effort to create greater understanding and to resolve conflicts in the South Asian region.
The prime minister noted that the conference is taking place ahead of the South Asian Association for Regional Conference summit in Islamabad and said it could discuss ideas on economic, strategic and geopolitical future of India and South Asia.
With SAARC members developing greater economic stakes in each other, he said, "We will also develop mutual sensitivity to each others' concerns and promote more of our common interests."
Vajpayee said if the SAARC countries -- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives --
provide legitimate avenues of free commercial interaction, they could eradicate black market and underground trade.
"We could jointly tackle smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering and other trans-national crimes, which today flourish in our region because of our mutual rivalries and inadequate coordination," he said.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/12sa.htm
PM moots single currency, open border in South Asia
HT Correspondent
New Delhi, December 12
Prime Minister A B Vajpayee on Friday laid the road-map for a harmoniously integrated South Asia, saying open borders and even a single currency for the region were not unrealistic and utopian if "we can put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions" and develop "mutual sensitivity to each others' concerns."
Delivering the keynote address at the first Hindustan Times Leadership Initiative on The Peace Dividend: Progress for India and South Asia, Vajpayee said the investment inputs required to reap this dividend were pragmatic politics, rational economics and popular participation.
The PM said: "Our people, businesses and organizations are waiting to interact more closely with each other. This includes producers and consumers, investors and markets, doctors and patients, artists and audiences, students and universities. They are all part of the supply and demand dynamics of a vast sub-continent. They see the unexploited potential in their own neighbourhood. They have waited for over a half-century for its fulfillment and are now impatient to move ahead."
He said, "We can sense this impatience in the outpouring of popular sentiment after our initiatives. We have to respond to this desire by seeking every possible way to banish hostility and promote peace."
Welcoming the HT initiative ahead of the forthcoming SAARC summit, the PM said, "Our search for pragmatism, maturity and wisdom will have to involve both governments and civil society. It will also require a widespread understanding that, in today's context, collective regional interest is an expression of enlightened self-interest."
Vajpayee said as we develop greater economic stakes in each other, "we can put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions. We will also develop mutual sensitivity to each others' concerns and promote our common interests."
He said, "If we provide legitimate avenues of free commercial interaction, we can eradicate the black market and underground trade. We could jointly tackle smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering and other trans-national crimes, which today flourish in our region because of mutual rivalries and inadequate coordination."
The PM said, "Once we reach that stage, we would not be far from mutual security cooperation and open borders and even a single currency. If this seems unrealistic and utopian, perhaps we are being unnecessarily cynical. Let us remember that the world did not anticipate the sudden end to the Cold War or the collapse of the Berlin Wall. No one thought apartheid South Africa could be transformed bloodlessly into Mandela's rainbow country."
Stating that the "our most important common war today is against poverty, disease, hunger and underdevelopment," Vajpayee said if we in South Asia look back objectively at the experiences of our freedom struggles and of our nation-building, the one stark lesson that stands out is the imperative of forging unity based on our commonalities.
"Whenever," said the PM, "we have dissipated our energies in internal squabbling, external forces have come in to sort out our differences and stayed on to exploit our resources. We should never create the possibility of reliving these historical experiences in new forms and on different fronts."
In her welcome address, HT Vice-Chairperson and Editorial Director Shobhana Bhartia said there could be no speaker whose credentials were more appropriate than Vajpayee.
"As Prime Minister, he has constantly and continuously put his reputation and his career on the line in his quest for a peaceful South Asia. He has demonstrated in his actions that he understands the importance of peace and recognizes the dividends that accrue from following that path."
She said HT had launched the Leadership Initiative because "we believe a serious newspaper must do more than just mere reportage or carrying interesting articles. A great newspaper is one that defines its role in terms of contributing to intellectual debate and shaping the future. We hope to gather the best and the brightest and to provide a platform for free and candid exchange of ideas."
She said: "We have called this conference, the Peace Dividend. There's reason for that. We see peace as more than just the absence of conflict. We see it as a necessary precondition for stability and prosperity."
Ms Bhartia said, "I do not think we can achieve global prosperity or world peace unless the issues confronting South Asia are suitably addressed. In many ways, South Asia is a microcosm of the rest of the world."
She said not only South Asia was home to nearly to all of the world's great religions, "in this region, we also find conflicts whose resolution will determine the future of our world. The conflicts between old and new, between religious fundamentalism and modernity, between terrorism and civilization, between military dictatorships and civilian rule, between authoritarianism and liberalism, and between ethnicity and nationhood."
She said if the conflicts that bedevil South Asia were not resolved, the fall-out will shake the whole world. "In today's global environment, events in one part of the world can have consequences that are felt thousands of miles away. For many years, the international community ignored Afghanistan and watched silently as the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, persecuted women and minorities, and unleashed a reign of terror on the people of Afghanistan. That silence and that neglect were to have terrible consequences which the world recognized only when two planes hit the World Trade Centre in faraway New York."
Ms Bhartia said a terrorist movement run by an Arab, headquartered in Afghanistan and targeting the US can strike at will at anywhere in the world. And the victims could be of any nationality. "That is how interlinked the world is today. We can ignore unrest, discontentment or oppression anywhere in the world at our peril. The consequences of such neglect can explode in our own backyards."
HT Editor Vir Sanghvi, who proposed the vote of thanks, said the difference between politicians and statesmen was that while politicians thought of the next election, statesmen thought of the next century. "By that reckoning, the PM has shown his leadership. For the cause of harmonious South Asia, he has often put his career in trouble."
He said, "We will have to think beyond Pakistan, of other countries in the region and how we can all work in harmony."
Ms Bhartia presented a memento and a portrait of Vajpayee drawn by HT cartoonist Sudhir Tailang to the PM.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_493...01300680000.htm
Kalyanaraman
PM for open borders, single currency in South Asia
December 12, 2003 16:08 IST
Urging South Asian nations to put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Friday said he envisaged mutual security cooperation, open borders and even a single currency in the region in the long run.
He called for promotion of peace in South Asia and cited the increased people-to-people contact between India and Pakistan as a reflection of an "intense desire for amity and goodwill."
Vajpayee was inaugurating a two-day conference on 'Peace Dividend -- Progress for India and South Asia' organised by Hindustan Times newspaper in New Delhi.
He said the demands of globalisation and aspirations of people provided the objective basis for energetic pursuit of a "harmoniously integrated" South Asia. People, businesses and organisations are waiting to interact more closely with each other.
They have waited for over half-a-century for fulfillment of "unexploited potential in their own neighbourhood" and were now impatient to move ahead, Vajpayee told a distinguished audience that included former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, union ministers, envoys of several countries and others.
The prime minister said, "We can sense this impatience in the outpouring of popular sentiment after our initiatives. The increased travel between India and Pakistan of parliamentarians, businessmen, artists and sportsmen show the intense desire for amity and goodwill. We have to respond to this desire by seeking every possible way to banish hostility and promote peace."
Welcoming the guests, Hindustan Times Vice-Chairperson and Editorial Director Shobhana Bhartia said the conference was an effort to create greater understanding and to resolve conflicts in the South Asian region.
The prime minister noted that the conference is taking place ahead of the South Asian Association for Regional Conference summit in Islamabad and said it could discuss ideas on economic, strategic and geopolitical future of India and South Asia.
With SAARC members developing greater economic stakes in each other, he said, "We will also develop mutual sensitivity to each others' concerns and promote more of our common interests."
Vajpayee said if the SAARC countries -- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives --
provide legitimate avenues of free commercial interaction, they could eradicate black market and underground trade.
"We could jointly tackle smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering and other trans-national crimes, which today flourish in our region because of our mutual rivalries and inadequate coordination," he said.
http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/12sa.htm
PM moots single currency, open border in South Asia
HT Correspondent
New Delhi, December 12
Prime Minister A B Vajpayee on Friday laid the road-map for a harmoniously integrated South Asia, saying open borders and even a single currency for the region were not unrealistic and utopian if "we can put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions" and develop "mutual sensitivity to each others' concerns."
Delivering the keynote address at the first Hindustan Times Leadership Initiative on The Peace Dividend: Progress for India and South Asia, Vajpayee said the investment inputs required to reap this dividend were pragmatic politics, rational economics and popular participation.
The PM said: "Our people, businesses and organizations are waiting to interact more closely with each other. This includes producers and consumers, investors and markets, doctors and patients, artists and audiences, students and universities. They are all part of the supply and demand dynamics of a vast sub-continent. They see the unexploited potential in their own neighbourhood. They have waited for over a half-century for its fulfillment and are now impatient to move ahead."
He said, "We can sense this impatience in the outpouring of popular sentiment after our initiatives. We have to respond to this desire by seeking every possible way to banish hostility and promote peace."
Welcoming the HT initiative ahead of the forthcoming SAARC summit, the PM said, "Our search for pragmatism, maturity and wisdom will have to involve both governments and civil society. It will also require a widespread understanding that, in today's context, collective regional interest is an expression of enlightened self-interest."
Vajpayee said as we develop greater economic stakes in each other, "we can put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions. We will also develop mutual sensitivity to each others' concerns and promote our common interests."
He said, "If we provide legitimate avenues of free commercial interaction, we can eradicate the black market and underground trade. We could jointly tackle smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering and other trans-national crimes, which today flourish in our region because of mutual rivalries and inadequate coordination."
The PM said, "Once we reach that stage, we would not be far from mutual security cooperation and open borders and even a single currency. If this seems unrealistic and utopian, perhaps we are being unnecessarily cynical. Let us remember that the world did not anticipate the sudden end to the Cold War or the collapse of the Berlin Wall. No one thought apartheid South Africa could be transformed bloodlessly into Mandela's rainbow country."
Stating that the "our most important common war today is against poverty, disease, hunger and underdevelopment," Vajpayee said if we in South Asia look back objectively at the experiences of our freedom struggles and of our nation-building, the one stark lesson that stands out is the imperative of forging unity based on our commonalities.
"Whenever," said the PM, "we have dissipated our energies in internal squabbling, external forces have come in to sort out our differences and stayed on to exploit our resources. We should never create the possibility of reliving these historical experiences in new forms and on different fronts."
In her welcome address, HT Vice-Chairperson and Editorial Director Shobhana Bhartia said there could be no speaker whose credentials were more appropriate than Vajpayee.
"As Prime Minister, he has constantly and continuously put his reputation and his career on the line in his quest for a peaceful South Asia. He has demonstrated in his actions that he understands the importance of peace and recognizes the dividends that accrue from following that path."
She said HT had launched the Leadership Initiative because "we believe a serious newspaper must do more than just mere reportage or carrying interesting articles. A great newspaper is one that defines its role in terms of contributing to intellectual debate and shaping the future. We hope to gather the best and the brightest and to provide a platform for free and candid exchange of ideas."
She said: "We have called this conference, the Peace Dividend. There's reason for that. We see peace as more than just the absence of conflict. We see it as a necessary precondition for stability and prosperity."
Ms Bhartia said, "I do not think we can achieve global prosperity or world peace unless the issues confronting South Asia are suitably addressed. In many ways, South Asia is a microcosm of the rest of the world."
She said not only South Asia was home to nearly to all of the world's great religions, "in this region, we also find conflicts whose resolution will determine the future of our world. The conflicts between old and new, between religious fundamentalism and modernity, between terrorism and civilization, between military dictatorships and civilian rule, between authoritarianism and liberalism, and between ethnicity and nationhood."
She said if the conflicts that bedevil South Asia were not resolved, the fall-out will shake the whole world. "In today's global environment, events in one part of the world can have consequences that are felt thousands of miles away. For many years, the international community ignored Afghanistan and watched silently as the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, persecuted women and minorities, and unleashed a reign of terror on the people of Afghanistan. That silence and that neglect were to have terrible consequences which the world recognized only when two planes hit the World Trade Centre in faraway New York."
Ms Bhartia said a terrorist movement run by an Arab, headquartered in Afghanistan and targeting the US can strike at will at anywhere in the world. And the victims could be of any nationality. "That is how interlinked the world is today. We can ignore unrest, discontentment or oppression anywhere in the world at our peril. The consequences of such neglect can explode in our own backyards."
HT Editor Vir Sanghvi, who proposed the vote of thanks, said the difference between politicians and statesmen was that while politicians thought of the next election, statesmen thought of the next century. "By that reckoning, the PM has shown his leadership. For the cause of harmonious South Asia, he has often put his career in trouble."
He said, "We will have to think beyond Pakistan, of other countries in the region and how we can all work in harmony."
Ms Bhartia presented a memento and a portrait of Vajpayee drawn by HT cartoonist Sudhir Tailang to the PM.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_493...01300680000.htm