21st century will be written in Asia and India will have a key role:Hillary Clinton

CHENNAI: Visiting US Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday advocated a more active policy initiative from India with reference to its stature and policies in Asia and the East. Clinton, who said she believed, "21st century will be written in Asia" and that India will have a key role in shaping it, said the Indo-US ties will be one of the defining partnerships of the new century.

Backing India's 'Look East' policy, Clinton urged the country to go further. She wanted India to go forward with that idea, pointing to how the US was looking to both the Atlantic and Pacific sides and suggesting that India too should be looking to both the West and East.

"We encourage India not just to look East, but to engage East and act East. And its leadership in South and Central Asia is critically important."

Speaking to a full audience that waited over an hour and a half at the Anna Centenary Library here, Clinton said the US was betting on India's future "not on blind faith", but having watched India's progress. "We are betting that the opening of India's markets to the world will produce a more prosperous India and a more prosperous South Asia. It will spill over to Central Asia and into the Asia-Pacific region," she said.

She went on to touch on almost all of India's neighbours and was critical of some polices that went against democratic norms in at least a few of them. She was particularly critical of the situation in Burma, stating that the government's treatment of its people was "deplorable". Her comment about Sri Lanka being in a process of political reconciliation and that every citizen of that country deserving the same opportunities for a better future, earned loud applause from the crowd.