New Delhi
1 January 2008
New Delhi will look to make progress on the 100-million-dollar
Kaladan multi-modal transport project and cement its bilateral ties with Burma when
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee hold
talks with visiting Burmese Minister of Foreign Affairs U Nyan Win on Wednesday.
Mr Win arrived in New Delhi on Monday for a five-day visit. His official engagements will
include a call on Vice President Hamid Ansari on Wednesday evening.
Mr Win's visit comes three weeks after India and Burma concluded foreign office
consultations in New Delhi. Burmese Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Kyaw Thu was here on December 11 for delegation-level talks with Foreign Secretary
Shivshankar Menon.
Wednesday's meeting between Mr Win and Mr Mukherjee will be the second in three
months. They had met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New
York on October 1. Incidentally, a day later, on October 2, India chose to vote against a
resolution in the UN Human Rights Council criticising Burma for human rights violations.
On another occasion, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Burmese Prime Minister
Lieutenant General Thein Sein met for the first time in Singapore on the sidelines of the
East Asia Summit in November.
In December, India was invited to the informal 14-nation Group of Friends of the
Secretary-General on Burma. This group met for the first time in New York on December
21.
The Kaladan multi-modal project entails construction of roads and waterways to give the
land-locked north-eastern Indian states, access to the Bay of Bengal via Burma. India
would have liked a transit route through Bangladesh but Dhaka's reluctance for providing
transit facilities to Indian goods through Chittagong port compelled India to turn to Burma
and to look for an alternative route to the sea from India's north-east.
New Delhi has said that Burma is a close and friendly neighbour, with whom it shares a
border of more than 1600 kilometres. Bilateral trade is nearly one billion dollars.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs, Burma also serves as a gateway to South
East Asia. "India is committed to extend assistance to [Burma] on various
developmental projects of mutual benefit including the Kaladan multi-modal transport
project," it has said.
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