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India considers China, US its top partners
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-26 15:30

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in New Delhi on Saturday, February 26, 2005 that India's foreign policy was driven by economic interests with the US and China having emerged as the country's leading partners. [AFP]

NEW DELHI - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India's foreign policy was driven by economic interests with the United States and China having emerged as the country's leading partners.

"Our relations with major powers especially the United States and more recently China have been shaped by these economic factors," Singh told a conference in the Indian capital on Friday.

"Who could have imagined a decade ago that China would emerge as our second largest trading partner," he said.

India and China fought a brief border war in 1962 that left their relations in shreds, but in recent years New Delhi and Beijing have played down their territorial dispute to focus on improving commercial and other ties.

Bilateral trade exceeded 13 billion dollars in 2004 compared to a few hundred million dollars in the 1990s.

Sketching out India's vision of greater economic cooperation among countries in the east, Singh said India hoped for the creation of an Asian community grouping members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with China, Japan, India and South Korea.

"The countries of East and Southeast Asia have become important economic partners and this has encouraged them to be more welcoming of us," Singh said.

The ASEAN grouping comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

India signed a framework agreement with ASEAN last year that will eventually lead to a free trade area in goods, services and investment.

India and the ASEAN group have set a target of raising trade to 15 billion dollars by 2005 and 30 billion by 2007.

Trade between the two jumped to 13 billion dollars in 2003 from 3.5 billion dollars in 1991.

Singh noted that business interests had helped India and the US forge a strategic partnership and resume joint defence training in 2002 after Washington lifted 1998 sanctions imposed on India for conducting nuclear tests. "Countries that imposed sanctions on India when we declared ourselves a nuclear-weapon power are now building bridges with us to utilise for mutual economic benefit," Singh said.

"There is today a growing recognition of India as a responsible nuclear power," he added.

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