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PM's first foreign trip to Thailand
PM is likely to make his first foreign visit to attend BIMST-EC nations regional summit in Thailand- acronym for Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand-Economic Cooperation in Thailand, to review Nepal and Bhutan's applications to join the five-nation grouping.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to make his first foreign visit after assuming charge of the government to Phuket, Thailand, next month to attend the regional summit of BIMST-EC nations.
The summit of the BIMST-EC - acronym for Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand-Economic Cooperation - was due to be held February 8-10 but was put off after then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, preparing for parliamentary elections, conveyed his inability to attend.
The rescheduled summit is now likely to be held July 30-31, according to officials.
This will be the first BIMST-EC summit since the establishment of the grouping in 1997. The group's meetings in the past were all at the ministerial level. The Phuket summit is expected to take a decision on the applications of Nepal and Bhutan to join the five-nation grouping.
Senior officials, working on the prime minister's international engagements this year, have been told to keep them down to the minimum as he wanted to concentrate on domestic issues and implementation of the Common Minimum Programme of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition.
Other international engagements that Manmohan Singh is likely to honour are the India-ASEAN summit in Vientiane, Laos in November and the India-EU summit at The Hague, Netherlands in October.
He may also visit New York to address the United Nations General Assembly in September, a visit that will enable him to meet major world leaders, including US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Russian President Vladimir Putin and others.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is also likely to be in New York at the same time though, according to officials, it is too early to say whether the two will meet. A lot would depend on the prevailing circumstances and the progress in the India-Pakistan détente, they said.
Manmohan Singh is not very keen to undertake bilateral visits this year, unless there are diplomatic compulsions, officials said.
