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YANGON, Mar 11 (AFP): Indian President Abdul Kalam left Myanmar Saturday after a four day trip in which he sealed a deal allowing his country to search for new ways to tap Myanmar's natural gas reserves.
The deal marked India's latest move in its competition with China for influence in military-ruled Myanmar, despite international condemnation of the junta's human rights abuses and calls for the release of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Indian foreign ministry official Shyam Saran told reporters in Yangon that Kalam and Myanmar's junta chief, Senior General Than Shwe, did not discuss the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi.
India has been trying to negotiate a three-billion-dollar deal to run a pipeline from Myanmar across Bangladesh to the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, but failed to make headway in the talks.
The agreement signed Thursday would allow studies into running a much longer pipeline through northeast India, which borders Myanmar, or converting the gas to liquefied natural gas for shipping.
China and Myanmar have already signed a deal to allow China to study building a pipeline from the Arakan Coast to its Yunnan province.
Most of Kalam's visit, the first by an Indian head of state, focused on business, although he also reached agreements on satellite imagery, telecoms, and education.
The satellite deal would allow Myanmar to use Indian satellite imagery, which could be applied to agricultural projects or to survey for minerals.
The third deal was to improve cooperation in Buddhist studies.
Official media in Myanmar reported Saturday that the two countries also reached an agreement for Telecommunications Consultants India Limited to run fiber-optic cables from the border town of Moreh to Myanmar's second city, Mandalay.
Another report from PTI Adds: Strongly favouring a trade volume between India and Myanmar at around two billion US dollars in the next three years, Indian President A P J Abdul Kalam Friday said that a "systematic" and "synergetic" policy had to be drawn up for this purpose.
"As per the 2003-04 estimates, the volume of bilateral trade between India and Myanmar is around 470 million USD. We need to work out a method by which we can aspire to increase this volume to around two billion USD within the next three years using MoUs signed by Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) with the CII and Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry," he said. At a meeting with representatives of UMFCCI, the President said "to achieve this target, a systematic and synergetic policy needs to be drawn up using the core competence of India and Myanmar".
The President said that New Delhi was working seriously on the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway which is likely to commence soon.
He suggested energising of port facilities for mutual benefit of the two sides. Observing that the Indian economy was an "ascending trajectory," he said the country's foreign exchange reserves were continously growing and the rate of inflation was coming down.
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