India fully supports strong, unified ASEAN: Jaishankar

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 16

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar emphasised the need to identify a new set of priorities while ensuring early realisation of ongoing initiatives on the first day of the India-ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meet here today.

Maintaining that India-ASEAN cooperation is a crucial stabilising factor as the world recovers from the pandemic and faces new problems, he said, “The last three decades have seen a transformation in regional architecture and beyond, driven by our achievements. We are resolved that the coming ones should build on that foundation.”

He said the Quad-led Indo-Pacific Oceans initiative and the ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific were becoming increasingly synergistic and assured that India strongly supported a strong and united ASEAN that fully recognised Indo-Pacific’s relevance.

He said the developments in Ukraine have had a deleterious knock on impact on logistics and supply chain.

Lauding India’s helping hand, Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said, “Each of us can recount incidents when India (during Covid) has stood up and helped us and we have been in our own small ways able to reciprocate.”

The only absentee in the 10-member ASEAN contingent was Myanmar, whose seat was left empty. The meeting was attended by six Foreign Ministers from Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam and representatives of three Foreign Ministers — Lao, Philippines and Thailand — along with the Secretary General of ASEAN.

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