India yet to decide on level of participation at ASEAN summit meetings

India is yet to take a final decision on the level of its participation at the meetings related to the ASEAN summit this month in Malaysia, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit will be held in Kuala Lumpur from October 26 to 28.

The people cited above said that though India has not decided about the level of participation, preparations are underway for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's possible visit to the Malaysian city.

The prime minister has led the Indian delegations at the ASEAN-India summit and the East Asia Summit in the last few years.

Malaysia has invited US President Donald Trump as well as leaders of several countries which are dialogue partners of ASEAN.

If Modi and Trump both travel to Kuala Lumpur, then there is a possibility of the two leaders coming face-to-face for the first time after the prime minister's trip to Washington DC in February.

There have been speculations that the two sides may explore the option of a bilateral meeting between the two leaders if there is a possibility of some outcomes from it.

The relations between New Delhi and Washington were reeling under severe stress after Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods to a whopping 50 per cent, including a 25 per cent additional duty for India's purchase of Russian crude oil.

India described the US action as ''unfair, unjustified and unreasonable''.

New Delhi is also learnt to be concerned over the Trump administration deciding to raise the application fee for H-1B visas to USD 100,000.

The move is expected to impact Indian nationals, who accounted for almost 70 per cent of all H-1B visas issued in the last few years.

The ASEAN-India dialogue relations started with the establishment of a sectoral partnership in 1992. This graduated to full dialogue partnership in December 1995 and summit level partnership in 2002.

The ties were elevated to a strategic partnership in 2012. The 10 member countries of ASEAN are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia.

The ties between India and ASEAN have been on a significant upswing in the last few years, with focus being on boosting cooperation in the areas of trade and investment as well as security and defence.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)