Helsinki, Sept 11 (ZEENEWS.COM) Asian countries on Sunday proposed India's name for becoming a member of the only grouping formed for direct economic and political discussions with Europe.

The suggestion was made as the sixth summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), in which 38 countries were taking part, got underway to talk on political, economic and social issues besides strengthening cooperation between emerging economies of Asia and developed countries of Europe.

The two-day meet proposed the names of India, Pakistan, Mangolia and Asean secretariat from the Asian side and Bulgaria and Romania from the European side for membership of ASEM, a formal grouping whose decisions were, however, not binding on member nations, said Jyrki Kallio, Finland Foreign Ministry official and incharge of Asian secretariat in ASEM.

The proposal to enlarge the ASEM will be formally adopted tomorrow at the conclusion of the summit, he said. The membership of the grouping would then go up to 45 from the present 39, Kallio added.

"It is only a formality and the proposals for the new memberships will be accepted tomorrow unanimously," he said adding, all decisions at ASEM are taken through consensus.

ASEM, set up in 1995, initially comprised 15 European Union member states and European Commission with ten Asian countries -- Brunei Darussalam, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The first summit was held in 1996 in Bangkok.

In the last ASEM summit in Hanoi, ten new EU members of Cyprus, Czec Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia and three Asian countries Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar joined as partners. ASEM partners now include 38 countries plus European Union.

ASEM is an informal process of dialogue and cooperation among partners on all issues of common interest to Asia and Europe. Summit meetings are held every other year in Asia and Europe alternatively.

This is the highest level of decision-making in the process, featuring the heads of state or government and the President of the European Commission. So far, five summit meetings have been held -- Bangkok (1996), London (1998), Seoul (2000), Copenhagen (2002) and Hanoi (2004).

South Asia has not been represented in the grouping so far and India's membership comes ahead of the India-EU summit to be held in Helsinki next month in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to head the Indian delegation.

India had taken up the issue of its participation with EU and Asian members of ASEM as early as 1996 when the first ASEM summit was held in Bangkok.

India is of the view that being a dynamic regional economy, no ASEM would be complete without its participation and the formal proposal today to make it a member amounted to recognition of India being among the top four Asian economies that also included Japan, China and South Korea.

ASEM activities are grouped into three pillars -- political, economic and social/cultural/intellectual and it has become a privileged framework where Asian and European countries discuss major political issues on the international agenda and address important regional developments in a non-confrontational way.

One of the major issue that was being discussed at the Helsinki summit was to reinforcing the multilateral system, particularly in taking steps to restart the stalled WTO negotiations.

WTO Director-Genaral Pascal Lamy and EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, who were to attend the summit, could not make it due to the G-20 developing countries' meeting in Brazil to make efforts to revive the WTO talks.

India and Brazil are among the active members of G-20 which articulates developing countries' viewpoint on trade talks especially on the contentious agriculture issue. Due to divergent views on the issue of farm subsidy, the WTO talks have not moved forward.

Growing bilateralism and regionalism with more countries going for bilateral and regional trade agreements figured prominently at the ASEM summit with multilateral institutions voicing concern on this score.

Security and anti-terrorism cooperation is other major areas of discussion in the grouping.