PM may stress need for India-ASEAN summit

By Amit Baruah

SINGAPORE, MAY 12. The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, will need to use all his diplomatic charm to convince the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, that the level of engagement between India and ASEAN needs to be raised to summit- level.

Malaysia opposed the proposal to have a separate India-ASEAN summit while other countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos backed the plan last November when ASEAN Heads of Government met in Singapore.

With Mr. Vajpayee beginning a four-day visit to neighbouring Malaysia tomorrow evening, he will get a first-hand opportunity to address some of the concerns raised by Kuala Lumpur.

Interestingly, the summit idea discussed by the 10- member ASEAN grouping involved an India-ASEAN summit taking place once in two years - not every year.

One of the participants at the ASEAN summit last year, the Indonesian President, Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, told this newspaper in January: ``It has to be understood that no decision in ASEAN can be taken by one side. Although I am very preferable to putting India there, but India is a part of SAARC. And, the relationship between India and SAARC should be considered. That's the point of Malaysia.''

In an interview to The Hindu in February (when Mr. Vajpayee's visit was postponed on account of the Gujarat earthquake), Dr. Mahathir also made it clear that India should show tolerance for other religions and regretted the demolition of a mosque (Babri masjid).

``It (the destruction of the mosque) is something that hurts the feelings, we cannot bring ourselves to say, well, let the mosque be destroyed; that will not be acceptable to our people,'' Dr. Mahathir said.

In turn, Mr. Vajpayee told the New Sunday (Straits) Times in an interview published on February 11, that ``tolerance and secularism are concepts ingrained in our national cultural ethos; they are also enshrined in the Constitution''.

``My Government is fully conscious of our cultural heritage, spiritual ethos and constitutional obligations which enjoin us to extend equal treatment to all religions, linguistic and ethnic groups in our country,'' Mr. Vajpayee told the Malaysian newspaper.

It is evident that the BJP's image of a party linked to the destruction of the Babri masjid has lasted almost nine years after the incident took place. It has certainly registered in Dr. Mahathir's memory.

As Mr. Vajpayee ventures into the third Southeast Asian nation in four months (he was in Vietnam and Indonesia in January), major regional players are also watching the inter-play between the U.S. and India.

The May 2 Indian statement referring to the ``strategic and technological inevitability'' of a missile defence system points to a major strategic departure in India's position vis-a- vis the U.S.

Tokyo and Seoul have not been as enthusiastic for the missile defence system as has been New Delhi. The Tokyo-Seoul-New Delhi ``yatra'' of the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Richard Armitage, has not gone unnoticed.

Why India chose to back the U.S. on such an issue even before Mr. Armitage arrived in New Delhi is anyone's guess. But the secrecy maintained by the BJP Government on the talks with the U.S. (both the Clinton and Bush administrations) only goes to show that the Vajpayee Government is finessing its faith in a unipolar world.

In Malaysia, Mr. Vajpayee will see that Malaysia under Dr. Mahathir has emerged as a major spokesman for the developing world; a country which repeatedly challenges the wisdom handed down by the American-led Western world.

In a sense, Malaysia is doing a lot of what India did in the past. If, however, India, under the BJP, is going to hitch its horses to the American stage-coach, then India may well lose the image of a country that takes up issues relevant to the developing world as part of an independent foreign policy approach.

Speaking in Osaka, Japan, recently, the Malaysian Prime Minister said: ``When they (the Americans) won the Pacific war and freed us from Japanese imperialism, I thought I would forever be anti- American. But the Americans have changed. They are no longer the liberators. They have become the dominators....''

``We in Malaysia have good reason to doubt the new Western recipe for the world. We have been the victim and we have seen others suffer even worse from the latest Western ideas and concepts....'' Dr. Mahathir added.

Mr. Vajpayee will find that he has a range of issues to discuss with Malaysia where the two countries can cooperate. But some misunderstandings need to be removed so that the relationship, based on a long history, can be taken to a higher plane.

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