VIENTIANE, Nov 30 ? Insurgents operating in India?s North East enjoying safe haven in Myanmar, Thailand and other ASEAN countries have rough days ahead, with a mechanism to build institutional linkages for intelligence and information sharing on movement of militants being set up. The ?ASEAN-India partnership for peace, progress and shared prosperity? that was signed by Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh here today might spell trouble for the North-east based militant outfits.
Taking off from where India and ASAEN left off in Bali, it was agreed today to strengthen and expand effective cooperation to combat international terrorism and other transnational crimes including through the existing ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crimes (AMMTC). The document that was inked today covered a whole gamut of issues from political and security
cooperation, economic cooperation, science and technology to energy to tourism and culture. India and ASEAN reaffirmed to full implementation of Free Trade Area by 2011 for ASEAN-five and India including the early harvest programmes to achieve free movement of goods, services, investments and cooperation in other economic areas.
India and ASEAN also agreed to implement specific activities and projects and to strengthen the existing funding mechanism including the ASEAN-India Cooperation Fund. India pledged $ 2.5 million to the Fund today. It was also agreed that the progress of the implementation of ASEAN-India Partnership and Plan of Action would be reviewed by the senior officials and the Foreign Ministers of India and ASEAN.
The menace of militancy figured in almost all discussions India has had at the ASEAN Summit, with all nations pledging support to fight the scourge. The ASEAN countries conceded that terrorist groups took full advantage of the situation to slip through and recognised the need for closer cooperation to fight the menace, said Secretary (East) Rajiv Sikri.
The Partnership document, meanwhile, agreed to develop joint programmes and use regional organisations for technical assistance to effectively fight terrorism and other trans-national crimes such as money laundering, drug trafficking, trafficking in persons, particularly of women and children, arms smuggling, cyber crimes, international economic crimes and sea piracy.
India and ASEAN have further agreed to explore developing anti-terrorism cooperation and assistance packages, covering among other aspects, immigration controls, customs cooperation, land, air and sea safety and to encourage accession to all relevant international and counter-terrorism conventions. India and ASEAN would also cooperate closely in opposing the threat of mass destruction especially in the context of such weapons falling into the hands of terrorist.