India will continue to seek conflict resolution peacefully: Ansari

Almaty (Kazakshstan), Apr 9 : Vice President Hamid Ansari today said that India would continue to seek a resolution of conflict through peaceful means and maintenance of friendly relations with all countries.

"There is an imperative need for cooperative approaches in the security and economic arena to overcome in surmountable obstacles," Ansari told students and scholars of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University after he was conferred an honorary doctorate here today.

He said India firmly believes that global threats call for global responses and equitable sharing of responsibilities.

Referring to terrorism, Ansari said that our values and civilisational heritage is against it, and added that India and Kazakshstan are committed to counter terrorism, religious extremism and fundamentalism.

"India has decisively demonstrated that democracy and development are compatible and necessary for ensuring sustainability," he said.

On Tuesday, India and Kazakhstan agreed to move their cooperation from generalities to "project specific" agenda even as Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev told the visiting Indian Vice-President Hamid Ansari that his country hoped to double the export of its oil from 50 million tonnes annually to 100 million tonnes over the next 10 years.

India hopes to enlist Kazakhstan as a source of crude oil imports.

Ansari had a 40-minute meeting with Nazarbayev at the Presidential Palace. He was accompanied by Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahmed and senior officials.

The meeting was described by an Indian official as "one marked by warmth."

It was felt by both leaders that India and Kazakhstan have talked too long in general terms, and that the time had come to talk of a "project-specific" agenda and cooperation in areas such as hydrocarbon, textile, information technology and education.

The Kazakh side has a better appreciation of India's search for energy and food security, the Indian officials felt after the Ansari-Nazarbayev interaction.

ANI