'Tongue twister' IORARC may be made user friendly

"Yes, indeed there was a discussion on it. I did find it was a little bit of a tongue twister. You have to pause to be able to get it right. There is a sense that we could simply it and make it user friendly," External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said here after the IOR-ARC Ministerial meeting.

He said that 15 years is not so long that people get very attached to a particular phrase or a particular word.

"And I think, this was looked at very seriously. There are some issues that need to be examined," he said, adding that the Secretariat will have it examined including issues that dwell on legal positions.

"I think, once that is done, we would be able to move forward. The sense was that it would be good to shorten it and make it user friendly. Hopefully we will see this happening," he said.

Meanwhile, Khurshid also mooted the idea of a University of Indian Ocean. He said his sense was that the idea was received well by the member countries.

"I flagged the idea... It is a big-ticket idea," he said, adding he wants the university to be a "twinkle in the eye".

He said he wanted to know if any country would like to come forward to host the university and added that India was always ready to promote and host such a university.