India To Work For Better Ties With China

India will work towards restoring bilateral relations with China, minister of state for external affairs Vasundhara Raje said and acknowledged that opportunities had been missed in the past.

Conducting a session of questions for Kavi Chongkittavorn, executive editor of the Bangkok-based The Nation here on Thursday, Raje said India agreed that the two countries were integral to Southeast Asia, a point earlier made by Chongkittavorn in a lecture on "Brotherly Engagement: India, China and Asean".

"There is nothing about me that is Thai. It is Indian and Chinese," he said. India can build goodwill and reap long-term economic returns in Southeast Asia if, like China, it sends high-level economic teams and provides monetary assistance to the area's beleaguered economies, he held.

He made it clear that "money talks in Asean" and indicated that although China had emerged as the region's leading and most energetic partner, the Cold War era mistrust of communist, totalitarian regimes lingered.

He pointed out that China's trade with Southeast Asian countries had increased to $25 billion in 1997, while India's stood at $7 billion. "It is very important for India and China, apart from Japan, to play a role in the current economic crisis. I think we are too dependent on Western countries.