By M.R. Narayan Swamy
Hua Hin (Thailand), Oct 23 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew into this Thai resort Friday night to attend the India-ASEAN and East Asia summits, but the high point of his numerous engagements will be a meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that will seek to ease tensions between the two Asian neighbours.

The prime minister was accompanied by Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, Principal Secretary T.K.A. Nair and Secretary (East) N. Ravi. A senior Indian official said Manmohan Singh had a packed programme Saturday and Sunday and that the mood in the Indian camp was “upbeat”.

The first engagement Saturday will be delegation-level talks between India and China, headed by the two prime ministers. It is set to begin at 10.30 a.m. at Hotel Dusit Thani, the venue of the two summits that has turned into a fortress.

On the eve of the Manmohan-Wen meeting, New Delhi reiterated that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was free to visit any part of India, where he has lived in self-imposed exile since 1959, and that Arunachal Pradesh was very much a part of India.

China has bitterly opposed the Dalai Lama’s proposed November trip to Arunachal Pradesh, the northeastern Indian state which Beijing claims as its own. China also came out strongly against the visit to Arunachal Pradesh by Manmohan Singh in October, upsetting New Delhi.

The Manmohan Singh-Wen meeting will be their first since they met in New York in October last year. It will also be the highest-level contact between the two countries since relations took a beating during the past one month over accusations and counter-accusations centered over their unresolved border row.

In an unprecedented phase in India-China relations not seen since 1962 when they fought a war, both Beijing and the official Chinese media have taken an unusually aggressive stance over Arunachal Pradesh.

New Delhi has also criticized Beijing’s decision to undertake projects in Pakistani Kashmir, saying this would impact negatively on India-China relations. The Chinese military has also been accused of foraying into Indian border areas. This has been denied by Beijing.

An Indian official said there was political consensus in India on building better relations with China. But this had to be based on mutual self-respect.

Manmohan Singh will be a key participant in the seventh summit between India and the 10-member Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Saturday and at the fourth East Asia Summit Sunday involving the ASEAN nations and six other countries.

Even before he set out from New Delhi, the prime minister set the tone by stating that he planned to discuss several new initiatives to accelerate the wide-ranging cooperation with ASEAN. India-ASEAN trade stood at $48 billion in 2008.

He said the conclusion of the India-ASEAN Trade-in-Goods Agreement in August this year was a major first step in New Delhi’s objective of creating an India-ASEAN Regional Trade and Investment Area.

Manmohan Singh proposes to take up the issues of greater economic integration, people-to-people contacts, agriculture, human resource development, education, science and technology, and information and communications technology when he meets ASEAN leaders separately and collectively.

ASEAN groups together Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The East Asia Summit, he said, would “provide an opportunity to discuss regional and international issues of common interest, and future direction for community building and cooperation”.

Besides meeting Wen, Manmohan Singh will hold bilateral meetings with leaders of six other countries, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

Manmohan Singh said that India’s enhanced engagement with the ASEAN was at the heart of its “Look East” policy initiated in 1992.

Manmohan Singh said the East Asian Summit would also discuss Asia’s response to the global economic slowdown, food security, energy security and climate change.

The East Asia Summit brings together the ASEAN countries as well as Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Japan and South Korea.

The prime minister expressed the hope that ASEAN and other countries of East Asia would endorse the proposal to establish the Nalanda University in Bihar as an international institution of excellence in education.