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KUALA LUMPUR, Dec. 13 Kyodo

Indian and Southeast Asian leaders held talks Tuesday on expediting a regional free trade agreement and enlisting Indian expertise in making generic drugs to combat a possible bird flu pandemic.

According to External Affairs Ministry Secretary Rajiv Sikri, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered his country's pharmaceutical expertise to the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations during their summit in the Malaysian capital.

''He offered the efforts to support a generic version of antiviral drugs and a regional network of antiviral drug stockpiling,'' Sikri said at a press conference.

Further details, he said, will be worked out at the technical level.

India is one of the world's biggest producers of inexpensive generic drugs.

''India's strengths in the pharmaceutical industry are recognized. India is a source of effective and affordable drugs,'' Sikri said. ''Therefore India can make a contribution in tackling these transnational communicable diseases like avian flu, or HIV/AIDS or whatever through supply of drugs and proper stockpiling of these drugs.''

India's drug manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. is currently in talks with Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche for a license to produce the anti-flu drug Tamiflu, which is considered the most efficient treatment in human cases of bird flu.

Roche, which has been under pressure to ease its monopoly, has already granted a license to Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group in China to produce the drug, which is facing short supply as countries around the world scramble to stockpile the drug.

Avian influenza has killed 70 people since it entered some Asian populations in the past year or so.

On the free trade agreement, ASEAN has pressed India to quickly remove stumbling blocks so an FTA could be implemented by Jan. 1, 2007.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who chaired the fourth ASEAN-India Summit, pointed out to India that it has excluded too many products from the list eligible for tariff reduction.

''As the ASEAN chair, I bring this matter up so that we, the leaders, could provide some political direction on moving forward the negotiations,'' he said in his opening speech. ''ASEAN is concerned on the proposal by India to exclude a substantial portion of trade from the FTA through exclusion of a large number of products from tariff concessions.''

Last Friday, Malaysian International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz had sounded out her Indian counterpart Kamal Nath on trimming the exclusion list.

''India has presented an exclusion list of 1,414 products, which represent 44 percent of ASEAN total exports to India,'' she said, ''How can you exclude 44 percent of our products already?''

The products, which Rafidah described as ''amusing,'' range from toilet seats, chewing gum and naked dolls to rice, textiles, vegetable oil and petroleum products.

The latter two made up 27 percent of ASEAN total exports to India.

India has given the assurance it will ''expedite and conclude'' talks over the next six months so the FTA can come into effect by 2007, Sikri said.

''We recognize the importance of the FTA and are committed to ensuring that it will be successful.''

ASEAN's trade with India last year amounted to $17.6 billion, 1.8 percent of ASEAN's total global trade. ASEAN's exports amounted to $10.9 billion and imports from India were valued at $6.7 billion.

Sikri said they are ''on track'' to achieve a goal of $30 billion in trade.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Malaysia is the country coordinator and the chair of the ASEAN-India FTA negotiations.