India, South Africa Cement Ties with Strategic Partnership Pact

Posted 03 October 2006 @ 05:38 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

PRETORIA (AP) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Thabo Mbeki have signed a sweeping pact to buttress ties between the regional powerhouses which serve as spokesmen for the world's have-nots.

Singh's visit coincided with the centenary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance movement launched in South Africa which ultimately helped liberate both countries.

"This is a most satisfying visit for me personally as it coincides with Gandhiji's 137th birthday today," Singh said, using an Indian honorific for Gandhi, after signing the strategic partnership with Mbeki.

"Both our countries face the common problem of ensuring that the fruits of development reach them who need them the most," he told a joint press conference.

South Africa, India and Brazil have formed a bloc which fights against global trade inequalities and espouses the cause of the developing world.

"Our two countries share a common vision of a cooperative, rule-based multi-polar world order," Singh said.

The Indian prime minister and Mbeki have met three times in as many weeks in Brazil and Cuba where they attended two different summits and here in South Africa.

"South Africa is India's biggest trading partner in Africa," Singh said. "Many of our Indian companies are here and are rapidly expanding their business presence. The rapid growth of the Indian economy offers significant opportunities to both sides."

The Pretoria agreement was followed by the signing of a pact on cooperation in education and another between Indian Railways which runs one of the world's biggest networks and South African railway company Spoornet.

The declaration fingered "energy, tourism, health, automobiles and auto components, chemicals, dyes, textiles, fertilisers and information technology" as "priority sectors" as well as India's "key information technology sector."

It said bilateral trade, standing at some four billion dollars last year, according to Indian estimates, should "at least treble by 2010."

Mbeki, lauding the long history of "warm friendship, support, solidarity and togetherness" with India, the world's first country to sever ties with the apartheid regime, said both sides needed to work on "bringing more content to this relationship."

He said both countries agreed on key international issues including the need for United Nations reforms and the restructuring of the Security Council.

Singh, meanwhile, said he solidly backed South Africa's bid for a seat on the Security Council, saying it deserved it "by virtue of its standing, its role and was eminently entitled to take that place."

Mbeki, like Singh, paid fulsome tribute to Gandhi, who forged his "satyagraha" or passive resistance movement in South Africa as a young lawyer which culminated in Britain's star colony gaining independence in 1947.

He underscored the need to "reinforce (Gandhi's) ideas and vision and that value system," which he said were "critically important to the restructuring of the world."

South Africa has supported India's goal of expanding its nuclear civilian energy programme.

India, now awaiting US approval of a landmark nuclear deal to give it access to civilian atomic technology, is eyeing nations like South Africa which boast rich uranium resources to meet some of its requirements for the mineral.

Singh, who is accompanied by a high-powered business team including Ratan Tata, chief of India's Tata group a big investor in South Africa later addressed a meeting of South Africa's top businessmen.

He was also due to visit a Johannesburg jail where Gandhi was held and meet anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela before being hosted at a banquet by Mbeki.