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Sujit Chatterjee in Singapore
In a veiled attack on Pakistan, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday said terrorism is supported and sponsored "only by undemocratic societies and totalitarian regimes" and favoured a comprehensive security framework for Asia to tackle politico-economic issues.
"It is not surprising that terrorism is supported and sponsored only by undemocratic societies and totalitarian regimes. But because democracies represent the will and determination of their peoples, they have the internal strength and resilience to resist and overcome the scourge of terrorism," he said delivering the prestigious Singapore Annual Lecture at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
Vajpayee said ethno-nationalist violence and terrorism-fed extremism were one set of impeding factors which need to be suppressed and eradicated.
"Multicultural and pluralist democracies are the most vulnerable to these ills, precisely because terrorists exploit the freedoms which their societies guarantee to the people," he said.
He said the Asian region, which has seven of the ten most populous countries, four declared nuclear weapon states, the largest armies and several missile producing and exporting states, faced recurring economic problems that first surfaced in 1997 and had tended to recur.
"The management of the unpredictable behaviour of this economy is also a problem with security implications," Vajpayee said.
The prime minister said there could be no effective solution to these problems within national boundaries but could be tackled through a cooperative approach, holistically and regionally.
"But unlike other continents with formal politico-security cooperation frameworks like OSCE, OAS and OAU, Asia does not as yet have a comprehensive security framework.
"Such a cooperative security framework is today gradually evolving and developing in the Asia Pacific. The ASEAN Regional Forum, with Southeast Asia as its nucleus, is developing into a unique platform for security dialogue," he said.
Vajpayee said the trends of the last decade indicate that this new century would be dominated by the power of technology and a globalised economic system.
"It is inevitable that the global socio-economic centre of gravity should shift to Asia. The Asia Pacific region has to respond creatively to absorb this change through a web of cooperative arrangements, which would promote this transition in a stable manner," he said.
PTI
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