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北京大学英语新闻网/Peking University News
Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of Foreign
Affairs of India, Speaks at PKU
PKU NEWS 2008--06—12
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=213531746
Peking University, June 12, 2008: Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of Foreign Affairs of
India delivered a speech on Asia security at Peking University (PKU) on June 6,
which was emceed by Prof. Wang Bangwei, Dean of Oriental Studies of the
Department of East Asian Languages, PKU. And the ambassadors from Sri Lanka,
Pakistan, Maldives, Singapore, Nepal and Cameroon attended.
As two of the major countries in Asia, Minister Mukherjee expressed in his speech,
both China and India needed a peaceful external environment in today‘s world, so
the two countries should make a new security mechanism together on the basis of
security dialogue mechanisms discussed in ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF),
Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) and
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for the peace, security and stability of
Asia and other regions. He pointed out that this security mechanism should have its
own characteristics based on the reality of Asia so we should neither just copy the
mechanisms from other parts of the world, such as European or trans-Atlantic region,
nor seek ways to establish a narrow and ultimately ineffective sub-regional security
mechanism. He believed that this mechanism would be helpful to deal with our
common concerns, such as the security problem of maritime lines which is directly
related to the circulation of regional trade and energy, and the future development of
the two countries.
Minister Mukherjee also expressed that the focus of international relations has
shifted to Asia at present, however, the current global governance systems in the
fields of politics and economy are based on the old world order set up in the middle
of the 20th century, therefore it‘s urgently needed to reconstruct the global
governance systems to make them more democratic and adaptive to the reality of
current world. He said that the cooperation between China and India was very
important to achieve this goal, which was also our common responsibility.
When interviewed by the journalists, Prof. Wang Bangwei said that what Minister
Mukherjee said was only a proposal, and it required a process to achieve. China and
India had initial development in the communication of security problems recently
which was unimaginable in a few decades ago. Therefore it would be meaningful to
consolidate the security in Asia and surrounding areas of China and India if
development would be made in the security cooperation between the two countries.
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