Singapore, Aug 1 (PTI) The domestic politics in South Asian countries has blinded them from tapping the potential that exists in the region, former foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon said on Monday, as he advocated ASEAN-like cooperation among them to reconnect and move forward with opportunities.

Taking part in a panel discussion as part of the ISAS Annual Conference 2022 held virtually, Menon cited the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an example and hailed its functioning as "quite admirable”.

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"Look at ASEAN countries. They are managing to balance, hedge and bandwagon all at the same time. I find that quite admirable,” Menon said. "In fact it seems to work well for their economies and for their security," he said.

ASEAN was preceded by an organisation formed on July 31, 1961 called the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), a group consisting of Thailand, the Philippines, and the Federation of Malaya. It has grown into a community of 10-member countries, forming the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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"I don't underestimate South Asia's capacity to do something similar (ASEAN) in South Asia … slightly different because of the different nature of what we are doing.

“Because we have in a sense been a sideshow for so long, many of us got very involved in our domestic politics,” he said at the conference titled ‘75 Years of Partition: Rupture and Connectivity'.

“And we allowed our domestic politics to blind us to the opportunities that exist in our region,” said Menon, the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington.

“The factor that prevents us from reconnecting South Asia is actually the domestic politics in all our countries,” he said.

“I don't think our domestic politics can bear the way we are actually doing the things that we need to do.

“We are 75 years old now … we are too old to go around blaming other people,” said Menon, who has served as India's National Security Adviser as well as Foreign Secretary and leading ambassadorial postings to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China.

The three-day virtual conference was hosted by the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) in the National University of Singapore.

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