Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left on a four-day visit to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday to attend the India-ASEAN Summit and the first East-Asia Summit hoping ASEAN leaders would outline a long-term vision for shaping the regional architecture and promoting community-building.
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"The first East-Asia summit is the beginning of a process that brings together countries with increasing inter-linkages
and growing inter-dependence," he said in a statement before leaving for Kuala Lumpur.
"It is our expectation that the Summit will articulate a collective long-term vision for shaping the regional architecture and promoting community-building," the prime minister said.
Dr Singh said the East-Asia Summit would provide an occasion for first-ever gathering of leaders of countries that had made the region an engine of growth for the entire world economy.
He said, "our relations with ASEAN as a whole, and with its individual members, have progressed steadily and satisfactorily over the years."
ASEAN had acquired a qualitatively new dimension since 2002 when the annual dialogue was initiated, Dr Singh said.
"We attach great importance to our relations with ASEAN, which constitute a central element in India's Look East Policy," he said.
Trade is likely to dominate the India-ASEAN summit, official sources said, adding that another issue that will come up prominently will be maritime security.
During the last five years, India-ASEAN economic relations have grown significantly.
Also with India clocking over eight per cent growth, South-East Asian nations see it as a huge market for trade and investment.
United Progressive Alliance Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh were among those who met the prime minister at his residence before he left for the airport.
India is likely to play a bigger role when the 10-member ASEAN and six other Asian nations meet in the backdrop of differences between China and Japan.
Ever since India embarked on its 'Look East' policy in early nineties when Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister, trade and investment into India from the Asian region had leapfrogged, official sources said.
Though China sees India as an emerging economic rival and wants the East-Asian grouping to be ASEAN plus three - China, Japan and South Korea, India wants the grouping to be 'open and inclusive' with a view to forming an Asian Economic Community along the European model.
Apart from 10 ASEAN nations, India, Japan, China, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand have been invited for the East Asian Summit which is expected to chalk out new guiding principles for the new engagement to integrate the region.
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