PM calls off trip to Philippines after summit postponement

New Delhi, Dec 8: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today called off a three-day visit to the Philippines from Monday after the postponement of a summit of Asian leaders on the island of Cebu due to concerns over an incoming tropical storm.

External Affairs Ministry officials said the Prime Minister would, however, go ahead with his trip to Japan from December 13 to 16.

He was originally scheduled to fly to Tokyo from Cebu on December 13, but will now leave here on that date and return to the capital in the evening of December 16.

Dr Singh was to have attended the fifth India-ASEAN Summit at Cebu on Tuesday and the second East Asia Summit the following day.

The Philippines announced today that the annual ASEAN summit and the East Asia summit from December 11-13 had been postponed until early January because of the incoming storm.

''The Philippine Government arrived at this decision in consultation with the governments of the leaders participating in the summit,'' Marciano Paynor, Secretary-General for the ASEAN Organising Committee, told a hastily-convened media conference in Cebu.

Reports from there quoted forecasters as saying that the tropical storm, currently over the northwest Pacific Ocean, would land in the central Philippines on Saturday but will pass north of Cebu. It was earlier forecast to pass through the resort island.

Last week, Typhoon Durian swept through the central Philippines triggering landslides and floods that are feared to have killed over 1,000 people.

In Tokyo, Dr Singh will hold talks with the Japanese leadership as part of India's attempts to give a boost to its "Look East" policy and strengthen the strategic and economic content of its ties with one of the most powerful economies of the world. The Prime Minister will be accorded a ceremonial welcome on December 14 and he and his wife, Mrs Gursharan Kaur, will be received in an audience by the Emperor and Empress of Japan in the afternoon of that day.

Dr Singh will meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for official talks on December 15 after which the two leaders will address a joint press conference. Mr Abe will host a banquet for Dr Singh that evening.

In what is considered to be a singular honour, the Prime Minister has been invited to address a joint session of the Diet, the Japanese Parliament, on December 14.

He will inaugurate the Festival of India in Japan that evening, when the two Prime Ministers will also unveil the joint logo of the India-Japan Friendship Year 2007.

Dr Singh will address a business luncheon jointly hosted by the apex chambers of the two countries on December 15.

Dr Singh will also meet several other Japanese dignitaries during his stay in Tokyo, including former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, senior Cabinet ministers and the President of the Japan-India Parliamentary Friendship League, Dr Taro Nakayama.

The last visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Japan was by Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee in December 2001. Then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had visited India in April last year.

UNI