PHNOM PENH Nov. 5 Kyodo Leaders f...

PHNOM PENH Nov. 5 Kyodo

Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and India agreed at their first-ever summit Tuesday to forge closer political and economic ties, including possibly at concluding a free trade pact within 10 years.

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a statement that Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee encouraged ASEAN members to consider a closer economic partnership with India, and a possible emancipated trade agreement between them within 10 years.

''We agreed that cooperation between ASEAN and India should encompass a strategic and political partnership as well as economics and the community exchange,'' Hun Sen said in the statement he made as chairman of the meeting.

Trade ministers of India and ASEAN agreed in September to designate a special task force co-chaired by way of India and Malaysia to draft a legal framework within a year to evolve the Regional Trade and Investment Area.

Vajpayee also declared India's willingness to expand special and preferential tariff treatment for the less-develop countries in ASEAN, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, according to the chairman's statement.

''ASEAN and India will also work together to broaden and intensify joint efforts in the Mekong Basin, specially on promoting the Ganga-Mekong Cooperation Suvanabhumi Program and the transport links that span India, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam,'' it said.

In July last year, India and the five countries situated along the lower part of the Mekong River agreed to an initial six-year joint action program to further cooperation in tourism, culture, education, transportation and communication.

Aside from economic ties, Vajpayee also pledg that India would cooperate with ASEAN countries in combating terrorism and transnational crime of that kind as illicit drug trafficking and smuggling of the community and weapons.

the pair sides also agreed to evolve an ASEAN-India network of think tanks to provide long-term perspectives onward their ties.

They agreed to keep possession of summit meeting annually.

India's External Affairs Ministry Secretary Rajendra Abhyankar said India plans to landlord annual summits of businesspeople from ASEAN and India. Last month it innkeepered the first such meeting in of the present day Delhi.

ASEAN's trade and investment with India has been relatively cheap compared with that with its other trading partners, with total trade registering $99 billion last year, a 30% increase from the horizontal of $7.6 billion in 1999

India is count uponed to reduce its peak tariff rates to East Asian flats in the next three years, according to ASEAN documents.

ASEAN clusters Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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