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US to support India’s Look East policy
November 11, 2011: Washington, Aiming to strengthen its ties with countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the US has said it wants to actively support India’s Look East policy and is committed to broader, deeper and more purposeful ties with it, reports PTI.
Sources: Assam Tribune News
“Our ability to build a successful regional architecture will turn on our ability to work effectively with the emerging powers, countries like Indonesia, or India, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Brunei, and the Pacific Island countries,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her remarks at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
As such the US is making a concerted effort to build closer and more extensive partnerships with all these nations, she said.
“India and Indonesia in particular are two of the most dynamic and significant democratic powers in the world, and the United States is committed to broader, deeper, more purposeful relations with each. And we want to actively support India’s Look East policy as it grows into an Act East policy,” Clinton said.
From the very beginning, the Obama administration embraced the importance of the Asia Pacific region, she said.
Clinton said that so many global trends point to Asia — it is home to nearly half the world’s population, it boasts several of the largest and fastest-growing economies and some of the world’s busiest ports and shipping lanes, and it also presents consequential challenges such as military build-ups, concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, natural disasters, and the world’s worst levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
It is becoming increasingly clear that in the 21st century, the world’s strategic and economic centre of gravity will be the Asia Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of Americas, she said.
And one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decades will be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise – in this region, she said.