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India, China can dominate next century, Hu Jintao says
By Salil Panchal
AFP
MUMBAI
Petroleumworld.com 11 23 06
Asia will dominate the next century if China and India can strengthen their trade and business links, China's President Hu Jintao said Thursday at the end of a visit to the fellow Asian giant.
"We need to move towards a free-trade agreement and boost bilateral trade further, particular along the borders," said Hu, whose four-day visit to India was the first by a Chinese president in a decade.
"If India and China take the necessary steps to strengthen trade and business, the 21st century will be Asia's," he told business and government leaders from both nations in India's financial hub Mumbai before heading to Pakistan on the final leg of his South Asian tour.
Hu, accompanied by a nearly 120-member business delegation, said a feasibility study for a regional trade agreement was being carried out.
India's Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath echoed Hu's call for greater economic ties, saying: "We must add 'mass' and 'items' to the trade basket."
During his speech to business leaders, Hu also called for more energy co-operation, saying "it will help us bid for third country contracts better."
India and China have increasingly been competitors as they scramble globally for energy and mineral resources to feed their fast-growing economies.
Earlier in the visit, the world's two most populous nations agreed to double trade to 40 billion dollars by 2010 and speed efforts to settle a long-festering border row that brought them to war in 1962.
Hu declared Wednesday in New Delhi he had visited India to enhance "mutual trust" and "chart a new course" for strategic relations.
Ties between India and China have long been clouded by the legacy of the brief but bloody border war and Beijing's economic and military support for Pakistan, India's long-time rival.
New Delhi claims a large chunk of Chinese-administered territory in disputed Kashmir while Beijing lays stake to Indian-administered Arunachal Pradesh.
Hu called his talks Tuesday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Indian capital "fruitful".
"China does not seek any selfish gains in South Asia and is ready to play a constructive role in promoting peace and development in the subcontinent," Hu said, as he welcomed improved relations between India and Pakistan which have fought three wars since independence in 1947.
Hu also been dogged throughout his visit by Tibetan protesters demonstrating against what they called China's illegal occupation of Tibet. Dozens were arrested. One Tibetan man in his late 20s set himself ablaze outside Hu's hotel Thursday but police quickly doused the flames, witnesses said.
India recognises Tibet as being part of China but has given asylum to tens of thousands of Tibetans.
Both sides had played down any expectation that Hu's visit could match the significance of president Jiang Zemin's trip in 1996 when the two sides agreed to lower tensions along their disputed border.
Before his final speech, the Chinese president met the family of an Indian doctor who died while treating Chinese troops during the 1937-1945 Sino-Japanese war and who has become a symbol of warming ties between Beijing and New Delhi.
Ten members of Dwarkanath Kotnis's family met Hu at his hotel and presented him with a handmade bedspread from Solapur town where the doctor was born.
"We're very happy he spent time with us," said 85-year-old Manorama Kotnis, Dwarkanath's sister.
Hu, in return, gave the family an album of photos of the doctor during his time in China. Kotnis died at the front in 1942 but lives on in Chinese textbooks and on postage stamps.
"I fully appreciate what Dr Kotnis has done towards maintaining Indo-Chinese friendship," Hu told the family.
AFP 23 0943 GMT 11 06
Copyright© 2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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