Commonwealth Secretary-General to visit India

14 October 2008

Sharma to meet Prime Minister, and attend Commonwealth Youth Games

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma will visit India from 16 to 21 October 2008. He will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other members of the government, speak to industry representatives, and attend the Commonwealth Youth Games.

Mr Sharma will begin his visit to India in Pune, where he is the Guest of Honour at the closing ceremony of the 3rd Commonwealth Youth Games on 18 October. The Games, which began in Edinburgh in 2000, are this year featuring some 1,300 young athletes from 71 countries and territories, taking part in nine different sports. The Youth Games will also provide valuable perspectives in the build up to the 19th Commonwealth Games, due to take place in New Delhi in October 2010. The Secretary-General is also expected to be briefed on preparations for the 2010 Games.

Mr Sharma will then travel to New Delhi, where he will meet the Prime Minister, as well as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Finance Minister Dr P Chidambaram, and the Minister of State for Youth and Sports, Dr M S Gill. He will also pay courtesy calls on Vice-President Hamid Ansari, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, and the Leader of the Opposition, L K Advani.

During his meetings the Secretary-General will discuss progress made by the Commonwealth in responding to mandates given to it by Heads of Government when they met in Kampala in November 2007. These include work on building respect and understanding between those of different faith, ethnicity and language, on reforming the global (particularly financial) institutions, on the best policy and practice of transforming developing societies to achieve real political, economic and social progress, and on climate change. He will also brief the Indian Prime Minister and others on preparations for the next Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago in November 2009.

Mr Sharma will also discuss developments in South Asia, in particular Commonwealth work in the area of governance and democracy. He will discuss India’s role in promoting sport as an instrument for development in the Commonwealth, as well as in strengthening the role of young people in local governance, through the Commonwealth Youth Programme’s regional centre for Asia, located in Chandigarh.

The Secretary-General will also discuss how Commonwealth member states could mark the association’s 60th anniversary year in 2009. The London Declaration of a union of ‘freely and equally associated states’ was arrived at in 1949, after India decided to become a republic but maintain its membership of the Commonwealth.

Mr Sharma will also meet the Confederation of Indian Industry, for a dialogue on how the Indian corporate sector could do more to support the development of a Commonwealth network of business skills.

This is the first official visit to India since Mr Sharma, an Indian career diplomat, took up the post of Commonwealth Secretary-General in April this year.

For further media enquiries, please contact Geraldine Goh on http://uk.mc860.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=g.goh@commonwealth.int or Tel: +44 7894 593 518.