India, Myanmar and Thailand discuss trilateral connectivity
Tentative deadline of 2016 set
Source: The Sangai Express / PTI

New Delhi, September 11, 2012: India, Myanmar and Thailand today took stock of the eagerly awaited trilateral connectivity project and decided to make all efforts to implement it by 2016. The India-Myanmar-Thailand Joint Task Force meeting on the trilateral highway project was held here in which all sides reviewed the present status of the project and discussed future steps.

It was recalled that the idea of a trilateral highway from Moreh in Manipur to Mae Sot in Thailand through Myanmar was conceived at the trilateral ministerial meeting on transport linkages in Yangon in April 2002. The trilateral highway represents the most significant step in the establishment of connectivity between India and South East Asian countries.

This was visualized as a highway of opportunity and friendship that would facilitate not just the movement of goods and services but also of people and ideas, a Ministry of External Affairs statement said.

It added the three countries agreed to make all efforts to establish the trilateral connectivity by 2016. The meeting also also agreed that steps be initiated to address issues related to harmonisation of customs and immigration procedures at border checkposts to enable seamless movement of goods and people to realise the full potential of the trilateral highway.

"It was agreed that the next meeting of the Task Force would take place in Myanmar or Thailand on mutually convenient dates.

"It was also agreed that a ministerial meeting on transport linkages may be considered after finalisation of the alignment and financial arrangements," the statement said.

The Bangladeshi delegation will proceed to Kolkata for the presentation of replicas of the houseboat 'Padma' and a smaller boat 'Chopola' used extensively by poet Rabindranath Tagore to Visva Bharati University in Shantiniketan and Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata.

The Padma boat, along with the Kuthibari in Silaidaha in Bangladesh's Kusthia district, is considered to be intrinsic to Tagore's creative outputs.

The poet is known to have used the houseboat regularly as a retreat in between his managerial duties at the family estate intermittently for a decade from 1890.On this boat, Tagore began his English translation of 'Gitanjali'.

Chopola was a dinghy attached to the Padma, an official statement released here said.

The present visit by Azad comes in the wake of the recently-concluded 150th birth anniversary commemoration of Rabindranath Tagore which the two countries jointly celebrated.

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