Resist unilateral approach to solve economic issues: PM

Tehran, April 11: IN an obvious attack on the industrialised nations for trying to forge a “digital divide,” Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Wednesday asked developing countries like Iran to join India in resisting unilateral approach in resolving economic issues.

“Countries like India and Iran, which retain their independence of spirit and action need to jointly engage in the process of countering (such) moves which could create a new international regime of economic discrimination,” Mr Vajpayee said in his address to the Iranian Parliament.

Tendencies of unilateralism in resolving economic issues have to be resisted, he said warning, “the imposition of tough measures for an accelerated liberalisation of fragile economies can provoke an economic collapse or a social backlash.”

Globalisation, the technology revolution and international interdependence were inescapable realities, he said.

But he warned: “It should not be an inevitable corollary that weaker countries get marginalised by the digital divide within and between countries.”

Emphasising that operation of some technology-denial regimes has blocked even genuine developmental requirements of developing countries, Mr Vajpayee, however, asserted that “the winds of globalisation, riding the storm of globalisation, cannot overwhelm us.”

“We will not be swept away from our cultural moorings; we will maintain our personalities and identities,” he said. (PTI)