Sunday, December 11 2005 13:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today (Dec 11, 2005) left on a four-day visit to Kuala Lumpur 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.

"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.

The Prime Minister 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," Singh said.

"We attach great importance to our relations with ASEAN, which constitute a central element in India's Look East Policy," he said.