Kalam call for India-EU joint fight against fundamentalist violence

Strasbourg,France, Apr 25 (UNI) Lauding the European Union (EU) experiment in regional cooperation, President APJ Abdul Kalam today called upon its members to consider India as an active partner in a similar experiment at a global scale for achieving peace and prosperity.

''You have demonstrated to the world that it is possible to build a strong union of nations without compromising national identities.

It has become an inspirational model and an example to emulate for every region in the world,'' Dr Kalam said addressing the European Parliament.

This was the first ever address by an Indian head of state, a body which represents 500 million people of the world. He said India and the European Union countries were facing many similar problems in the present scenario, and among them extremist and fundamentalist violence was the most disturbing one.

Pointing out to the extremist violence faced by India and the countries of the Union, he said the root cause of such a violence has to be addressed.

''The world over poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and deprivation are driving forward forces of anger and violence. These forces link themselves to some earlier real or perceived historical enmities, injustices, inequities and religious fundamentalism,'' he said.

''Both India and the Europena Union have witnessed and are witnessing the unsavory acts of certain misguided sections of society. We have to jointly address ourselves to the root cause of such phenomena to find lasting solutions for promoting peace,'' he said.

India and the European Union, which brings together 27 countries, both support a social forum of economic growth and encourage a model of growth with equity and are conscious of a need to respect environment and make it sustainable for future generations, the President said.

Dr Kalam put forward to the European countries, a blue print for three important Indo-European missions aimed at achieving global peace and properity.

The first is for evolving a citizen with a value system, the second is a three dimensional approach for energy choice towards realising a clean planet and the third is for synergizing the core competence of the European Union and India in certain areas, for providing solutions to critical issues like water, healthcare and capacity building.

Third mission, which he said was for evolution of the 'World Knowledge Platform, will enable joint design, development, cost effective production and marketing of knowledge products, systems and services in various sectors.

This platform will be a meeting place for science, technology, industry, management and marketing, he added. It will touch areas, which are of utmost urgency to all people like water, healthcare, agriculture and food processing, habitat, transport and disaster management etc, he said.

He laid special emphasis on finding alternative and renewable sources of energy, must for powering development in the world, which is on the verge of ranning short of its fossil fuel resources.

In this connection, he mooted setting up of an 'Indo-EU Renewable Energy Development Programme' for taking up advanced research in all forms of renewable energy, leading to availability of commercial class large scale power plants within the next decade.

But, he sought to remind, all efforts of human beings for their material advancement would fail unless there was righteouness in their character.

Righteouness makes character beautiful, which leads to harmony in homes, leading to order in the nation, he said.

It was in this context that education with a value system was a must.

He said he would like religion to make the society think and act in a more enlightened way, and as an example he narrated the incident in which India's architect of the Space programme Vikram Sarabhai was happily given a church land by the Bishop for setting up a space research centre.

UNI