Xi invites Modi to visit China, Modi invited SA's Zuma to visit Indian in Jan 2015
Though minister for external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj did not accompany prime minister Narendra Modi to the BRICS summit in Brazil on July 15-16, and his meeting with leaders of Latin America in a suo motu statement she made in Lok Sabha on Wednesday morning.
She said that "Prime MInister also made it clear that India fully supports an open, efficient and rule-based global trading regime under the WTO."
She said Modi in his bilateral meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping, Modi had "stressed the importance of strengthening mutual trust and confidence, maintaining peace and tranquillity on the border and respoecting each other's interests and concerns, including in our shared neighbourhood..."
She said Xi had invited Modi to visit China during the year. In his bilateral with South African president Jacob Zuma, Modi had invited Zuma to visit India in January 2015 to mark the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi's return to India from South Africa.
Swaraj said that the prime minister was satisfied with the visit, and she stressed that "in the merging global environment, it is essential for India to pursue pro-active and broad-based international engagement, and she defined India's neighbourhood as "stretching from West Asia to East Asia."
This is a subtle reformulation of India's strategic neighbourhood. In the NDA1 period, then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had talked of India's strategic neighbourhood which includes South-East Asia and Central Asia. This is the first time that India is talking of East Asia, which is considered the exclusive strategic preserve of China, which is engaged in a tussle of power with old rival Japan.
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