New Delhi [India], January 4 : Senior Indian Foreign Service officer Srinivas Gotru has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to ASEAN, a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) stated.
The 1997-batch IFS officer is presently Joint Secretary in the MEA.
Gotru is expected to take up the assignment shortly, as per the statement.
ASEAN-India relations have grown rapidly from a sectoral dialogue partnership in 1992 to a full dialogue partnership in December 1995. The relationship was further elevated with the convening of the ASEAN-India Summit in 2002 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Since then the ASEAN-India Summit has been held annually. All these took place in a decade, which clearly signifies the importance of the dialogue partnership to ASEAN and India and the progress made in the cooperation.
As ASEAN and India commemorated the 20th Anniversary of its Dialogue Relations in 2012, both sides elevated the ties to the Strategic Partnership. Efforts continued to be intensified to enhance the partnership across the spectrum of the three ASEAN Community pillars. In this conjunction, the ASEAN-India Eminent Persons group (EPG) was established to take stock of ASEAN-India relations over the 20 years, explore ways and recommend measures to strengthen and deepen existing ASEAN-India cooperation and partnership in the future.
Since India became a Dialogue Partner of ASEAN, the collaboration has intensified to cover political and security dimensions. India participates in a series of consultative meetings with ASEAN under the ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations, which include Summit, ministerial and senior officials meetings, and meetings at experts level, as well as dialogue and cooperation frameworks initiated by ASEAN such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Post Ministerial Conference (PMC) 10+1, the East Asia Summit (EAS), ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus as well as sub-regional cooperation frameworks, namely Mekong-Ganga Cooperation and Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), which contribute to enhancing regional dialogue and accelerating regional integration.
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