First, we have to set up the core Mekong-6. Since my recent trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, I have proposed to Myanmar, Vietnam and other Mekong countries, to allow us to have a meeting aimed at setting up a permanent secretariat. Secondly, after this we have to examine in which fields we can join hands, infrastructure for instance. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is helping us a lot in this area. They call it the North-South, West-East transport infrastructure system, being planned to run across the Mekong countries. I have also launched the idea of creating a new airline, called the Mekong-6 airline. We will have an open-skies policy among the six countries. After that, we will look at linking with India.
What steps have been taken so far?
I have already officially invited various Indian chambers of commerce and industrial federations to come to Cambodia and see with their own eyes the prospects here, and what we can do together to invest in Cambodia. And at the same time we will see how we can integrate eastern India and southern China with the Mekong countries. In early April, the World Economic Forum is organising a tour of the region, to be attended by more than 60 people from Europe. In Cambodia, they will hold meetings with us, and they are bringing businessmen to see what kind of investments they could make in the Mekong-6.
What's your Mekong-6 concept, and how will it work for India?
The Mekong-6 means this—we have six countries in the Mekong basin: China, with its southern Yunan province, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. I launched this idea two years ago in Singapore in the framework of the World Economic Forum, and even ASEAN picked up the idea during its summit last December. Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed had talked about the Mekong-6 at that meeting. ASEAN has set up an ad hoc committee under Mahathir in order to study the possibility of doing something together in the very large and very important area of the Mekong, where we have 225 million people. Why shouldn't the eastern part of India, including West Bengal and Orissa, and southeastern India, including Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, join south China and the Mekong-6? It is a very timely idea. I said (to India) "come and join us". My idea for the Mekong-6 is not like ASEAN which is a political, economic, even social, integration. Mekong-6 is nothing like that. Under this one umbrella, every country keeps its own political ideology, but what we have to search for in common is how to share the natural resources of the Mekong area. We should not yet talk about free trade. Let's say that if we can exploit the Mekong river to produce electricity, why not? Tourism? Could we do it in common? This idea has interested India.
What were your impressions of your visit to India?
I went to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to further strengthen our already good relations. After my appointment as the first prime minister of Cambodia, it was the first time I visited the country. India had played a very important and active role in the Cambodian peace process. She had sent her sons (armed forces) to help Cambodia and the UN in organising the elections of May 1993. During my talks with Rao, we reached an agreement on agriculture. We admire India because in spite of a huge population of nearly one billion, it is not only self sufficient in rice and food grain, it even has a surplus that it can export. The second agreement we signed with India was on culture—another key area. In Calcutta, I invited Indian investors to Cambodia. India is very interested in investing in light and agro-industry, garments and the power sector in our country.
