India’s Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, delivering the inaugural address at the IISS–MEA Foreign Policy Dialogue in New Delhi, December 2007
The second IISS-MEA Foreign Policy Dialogue took place on December 13, 2007 in New Delhi, India. Inaugurating the Dialogue, India’s Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, said that “the IISS has played a significant role in shaping international discourse on strategic issues and I am happy to note that it is now concentrating on Asia. In April, the IISS will organise a major conference on India. Such occasions offer a useful opportunity for experts and scholars to exchange and analyse views on the series of strategic issues that confront us”.
Three subjects dominated the dialogue – the strategic shape of the world, international terrorism, and energy security. Menon said all three are crucial to whether or not India achieves the basic goals that the foreign policy has set to enable India’s transformation. “In fact, today more than ever, the outside world will affect India’s future. Measured by any criterion, the proportion of GDP linked to foreign trade, the role of foreign investment and technology and India’s need for energy, markets and raw materials, we are more connected to the rest of the world than ever before. The strategic shape of the world and the issues that you will consider are therefore central to our concerns”, he added.
Condemning terrorism, he said, “International terrorism remains a major threat to peace and stability. We in India have directly suffered the consequences of the linkages and relationships among terrorist organisations, support structures and funding mechanisms, centred upon our immediate neighbourhood, and transcending national borders. Any compromise with such forces, howsoever pragmatic or opportune it might appear momentarily, only encourages forces responsible for terrorism. Large areas abutting India to the west have seen the collapse of state structures and the absence of governance or the writ of the state, with the emergence of multiple centres of power. We feel the results, in the form of terrorism, extremism and radicalism”.
He also spoke about the declaration that was adopted at the SAAARC Council of Ministers in Delhi which noted that the way forward lay in energy security. The declaration resolved to have adequate resources to tackle climate change without detracting from development aims: effective access to, and funding assistance for transfer and adaptation of environment-friendly technologies; binding greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments by developed countries with effective timeframes: and equitable burden-sharing.
Ambassador Arif Khan, Additional Secretary (Public Diplomacy), MEA welcoming H.E. Ambassador S.K. Singh, Governor of Rajasthan, who gave a Special Address
HE Mr M. Hamid Ansari, Vice President of India, with the visiting IISS Delegation, New Delhi, December 2007
