New Delhi, November 09: Worried over the rise in terror incidents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday asked the global community to extend sustained cooperation for dealing with the menace for ensuring stability in the region.
“We are very worried about the rise of terrorism in our neighbourhood, particularly what is going on in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. We have a vital stake in peace, progress and stability of these countries and other countries of South Asia,” Singh said while inaugurating the India Economic Summit.
He said India has been a victim of terrorism, “unfortunately coming from across our border for the last 25 years” but the world discovered it as a global problem only after 9/11.
Replying to a question on what were the two issues that were close to his heart, Singh said: “Of all the programme areas, the closest to my heart are education and health sector. We should have done a lot more on these two areas. We were late in this process.”
Over 40 years after the country set a target of increasing spending on education to 6 percent of GDP, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today hoped that this would be achieved in the next couple of years.
“It is my sincere hope that in the next couple of years we can get public sector involvement and investment in education to six per cent of our GDP and also public sector investment in health sector… from about 1.5 percent to 2-2.5 percent of GDP,” he said.
India also promised to work for a purposeful outcome on climate change at the Copenhagen Conference, but asked rich nations responsible for the damage in the first place to finance developing countries’ work on limiting carbon emissions.
“We will work with all like minded countries to promote a purposeful outcome of the Copenhagen Conference,” Prime Minister said.
He, however, held developed nations responsible for the CO2 accumulation due to industrialisation over the last 150 years.
He also sought rich nations’ help for a technology regime under which the developing countries of the world would have access to these technologies at affordable rates.
—Agencies