Friday, July 28 2006 12:37 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kuala Lumpur: India has told the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) that terrorism is a 'global concern', which needs to be tackled collectively on a priority basis.

Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh said 17 areas of security cooperation were identified at the 11th Asean Summit in Kuala Lumpur last December but the Asean Secretariat had whittled down these to five areas energy, education, finance, maritime, and avian influenza.

"Unfortunately, we don't have terrorism in the five and we wish it was there. It is a high priority area for us because we are often subjected to (acts of) terrorism," he told the state-run Bernama news agency in an interview.

Citing the July 11 train blasts in Mumbai which killed more than 200 people, he said terrorism was becoming a global concern, including in the Southeast Asian region, and had to be tackled collectively.

Rao said India considered the ARF, which is more than a decade old and the largest security forum in the Asia-Pacific region, as a vital platform because security matters could be raised by the participating 25 member countries.

"We hope that the ARF will succeed and we are able to play an active role, not a predominant role but a supportive role. The baseline is that nobody's ego should get in the way to make it a non-success," he said.

Rao also said that ARF was not moving slowly, as claimed by some critics, but at the right pace.

On the East Asia Summit (EAS), he said India wanted to see the summit bloom into a dynamic community similar to the European Community and India, with a fast-growing economy, was ready to contribute to the success of the proposed East Asian Community.