S Jaishankar: India has a new energy on foreign affairs

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday outlined India's contributions across the world and said New Delhi is willing to engage more with countries pertaining to different matters.

"We are in a very unique position. Being a market economy, and a democratic and socially pluralistic country, we have comfort with the West. Being a part of rising Asia, we have comfort with a lot of rebalancing with Asian countries," he said at an interactive session of the World Economic Forum.

"While working with countries of Asia and Africa, we have a much stronger bonding with those countries. You saw recently at the UN, the willingness today to go out and engage with countries, visit more countries and therefore you can see a new energy in our foreign affairs," Jaishankar outlined.

Talking about South Asia, Jaishankar said that India's development can lift the region and listed joint infrastructural projects undertaken in the region. "We don't talk reciprocity in our neighbourhood anymore...The entire neighbourhood, minus one, has been a good story of regional cooperation," he said in a veiled reference to Pakistan.

Jaishankar said he wanted to see the Indian foreign policy influential enough to decide global outcomes.

"India is an exception as we are more nationalistic, but at the same time we don't see a tension between being nationalistic and being international, in the sense of engaging more with the world, so nationalism is not a negative sentiment," he stressed.

-ANI