"Sri Lanka produces excellent tea...India also produces excellent tea. This is an area where we should avoid getting into suicidal mutual competition. Together, we can market tea all the world over," Ramakrishna Hegde told a trade fair in Colombo.

"While we are exploring the possibility of bilateral trade and inter trade, we should also on basis of mutual agreement, explore the possibility of joint marketing," the minister said at the 2nd South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) Trade Fair.

Hegde said India and Pakistan should jointly market basmati rice, grown by both countries.

"We should protect our market. Basmati can not be produced in America," he said referring to a row that arose after a 1997 decision by the US patent office to allow Texas-based RiceTec Inc to sell a variety of its own products under the basmati brand name.

"We must beware of economic imperialism," said Hegde, adding that Saarc, which groups India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives, should "stand together to face the domination by the developed countries."

The South Asian nations aim to forge a reduced-tariff regime known as the South Asian Free Trade Area by 2001. The total combined world trade of the countries, which are among the poorest in the world, is less than four per cent.