NEW DELHI: While the US isn’t happy that Myanmar’s military junta participated in the seven-nation Bimstec summit, India said on Wednesday that the Asean nation is important for successful cooperation among the member-states. India has continued to maintain that its Myanmar policy is driven by its security concerns emanating from insurgency along its border with it.
“Bimstec is a multilateral, it’s a regional cooperation platform and the aim is to focus on economic and development cooperation, to do activities that genuinely deliver value to people,” said additional secretary-ministry of external affairs, Rudrendra Tandon, who handled Bimstec, after the summit on Tuesday.
“The members on this platform are countries who are either geographically littoral to or dependent upon the Bay of Bengal. For the success of cooperation activities on this platform, we require all countries to be present and to participate in that cooperation activities. Myanmar is an important constituent member of the Bimstec and it has a very important geography,” he added.
Tandon also said that India will lead the security pillar of Bimstec. Asked about cooperation under the security pillar, Tandon said the activities will be based on the potential and capacities of the platform. “Currently, our approach on the security pillar is to try two things — firstly establish the highest quality norms for combating terrorism and transnational crimes and other non-traditional crimes and at the same time put in place all the legal mechanisms required to enable our law enforcement agencies to collaborate as closely as possible,” he said.
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NEW DELHI: While the US isn’t happy that Myanmar’s military junta participated in the seven-nation Bimstec summit, India said on Wednesday that the Asean nation is important for successful cooperation among the member-states. India has continued to maintain that its Myanmar policy is driven by its security concerns emanating from insurgency along its border with it. “Bimstec is a multilateral, it’s a regional cooperation platform and the aim is to focus on economic and development cooperation, to do activities that genuinely deliver value to people,” said additional secretary-ministry of external affairs, Rudrendra Tandon, who handled Bimstec, after the summit on Tuesday. “The members on this platform are countries who are either geographically littoral to or dependent upon the Bay of Bengal. For the success of cooperation activities on this platform, we require all countries to be present and to participate in that cooperation activities. Myanmar is an important constituent member of the Bimstec and it has a very important geography,” he added. Tandon also said that India will lead the security pillar of Bimstec. Asked about cooperation under the security pillar, Tandon said the activities will be based on the potential and capacities of the platform. “Currently, our approach on the security pillar is to try two things — firstly establish the highest quality norms for combating terrorism and transnational crimes and other non-traditional crimes and at the same time put in place all the legal mechanisms required to enable our law enforcement agencies to collaborate as closely as possible,” he said. FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA