‘Indo-Pacific is of growing strategic importance and is the centre of gravity for world economic growth’

French Ambassador for the Indo-Pacific, Marc Abensour, who is on a visit to India to attend a conference of France's ambassadors to the Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific nations in Delhi, made a stopover at Bengaluru where he took time off to speak to The Hindu on a wide range of topics from France's friendship with India to China's dominance in the Indo-Pacific region.

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Within the Indo-Pacific strategy, we have developed a privileged partnership with India. | have come on a regular basis to engage further with our India colleagues on how we can partner together across the Indo-Pacific and this time for the first time we had a meeting of all French ambassadors posted in countries around the Indian Ocean which was attended by colleagues posted in Eastern Africa, the Middle East countries and South Asia. It was the first time we had this opportunity to confront our analysis, assessment, ideas, and initiatives and see how we could push forward our Indian Ocean agenda. It is very useful to have a perspective within the conceptual framework of our Indo-Pacific strategy.1 am saying this mainly because of two things: you have two dimensions within the Indo-Pacific strategy. The first dimension is you change perspective. You do not think in terms of geographical region, or sub-region but you think of flows, maritime flows, undersea cables, internet flows, sand hipping flows for trade. You think in terms of connectivity flows... it changes perspective. The second dimension is that within the Indo-Pacific strategy we also try to provide solutions to the challenges posed by the growing assertiveness of China. So we think it is a very useful vehicle to see how we can partner with some countries within the Indo-Pacific on a wide range of areas which can be security, defence, fight against climate change, protection of biodiversity, sustainable management of oceans, the green transition, digital transition and on fight against infectious diseases. | think in all these areas we have a shared interest which is to reduce dependencies and increase our resilience and we can only do that by building networks of partnerships.

Is this your first visit to Bengaluru and what are your views ?