SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Amidst the reports of earthquake in north India and Pakistan, the SAARC summit has just started, with news so far, India and Pakistan have refrained this time in using SAARC as a platform for venting their anger towrads each other. Also Afghanistan is a member now.
But I still wonder does SAARC really has any relevance or impact??

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http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india/04_2007/14th-saarc-summit-begins-in-delhi-37622.html

New Delhi: The 14th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) opened in the Capital on Tuesday.

Afghanistan, which was so far enjoying the status of a special invitee, was formally inducted as the 8th member of the regional grouping after all the Heads of State and Governments signed a declaration to this effect.

The summit saw a rather understated reference to terrorism by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

There was a matching response from his Pakistani counterpart Shaukat Aziz, who never mentioned Kashmir at all. But Afghan President Karzai, without naming Pakistan, slammed it for supporting terrorism against his country.

Sri Lanka called for an anti-terror mechanism within SAARC while Bangladesh asked for addressing the security concerns of SAARC members.

Speaking on the sidelines of the opening of the two-day meet, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that South Asia was in the midst of an “unprecedented” economic and political transformation and governments of the region were working together to address the issues.

“The political transformation is painful. Each one of us has to work out for ourselves and within our countries and between our governments,” the Prime Minister said.

He proposed direct flights linking the capitals of all its members. He also announced unilateral liberalisation of visa policy for students, teachers, researchers, journalists and patients.

Singh also stressed on a duty-free access to Indian markets to “our South Asian neighbours without insisting on reciprocity”.

“We see signs of hope … governments of the region are addressing bilateral political issues. We should break with the past and join hands to overcome the challenges”, Singh said.

The Prime Minister also welcomed Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and said India was proud that Afghanistan was attending its first SAARC Summit as a full member.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who was also present on the occasion, urged SAARC nations to leverage their strength and overcome common challenges. He also proposed a five-point roadmap to promote genuine peace and security in the South Asian region.

Aziz pointed out that political environment in the region has held back the growth of SAARC. While stating that SAARC must be made goal oriented, Aziz added, “We need to move from debate and deliberations towards concrete action.”

Referring to menace of terrorism, the Sri Lankan President said the recent air attack at Katunayake by the LTTE must attract attention of the SAARC leaders.

“The recent attack at Katunayake by the LTTE must attract attention of all of us to the fact that our region as a whole is not safe from the barbaric terrorist groups,” he said.

(With PTI inputs)

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

how is afghanistan part of south asia?

its an central asian country

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

^ that does'nt make much difference. Who knows someday China will also become a member of SAARC.

SAARC remains the most redundant and least productive of the regional organisations. I don't think they will make much headway on any issue this time around either.

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

^^ dont know, the Arab League and OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) can give it a run for its money

the most efficient is probably EU and SEATO

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

SEATO ?

EU, ASEAN, Shanghai (gradually taking off), NAFTA, MERCOUSER, APEC.

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

^ You guyz ever heard about GCC (the so called Gulf Co-operation Council)...I think SAARC will soon look like GCC, very few will be interested in it.

I say blame it on long standing differences between Pakistan and India-- both nations frequently use this platform to swipe on each other, making SAARC redundant.

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

we don't need to go that far. Ever heard of ECO? thats practically dead due to the situation in Afghanistan, diametrically opposed interests pursued by Iran and Pakistan within Afghanistan, trade lacunas, transport problems; you name it and the list is endless.

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

whats ECO?

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

Economic Cooperation Org or ECO is perhaps the ideal regional organisation that brings together countries from Central, South and West Asia. However, sadly it hasn't been able to acheive much. It has Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and 6 CA states as its members. The work on a number of projects that can link all these countries is very slow and I guess that has largely to do with their 'focus' or lets say priorities.

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

okay, back to SAARC. Here is a very informative editorial I would like to share on SAARC.

SAARC Summit was disappointing

Before the 14th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in New Delhi on April 3 and 4, the ministers of India and Pakistan were talking of and hoping for some kind of breakthrough. The South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) was the big item on the agenda with India saying it would be “non-reciprocal” in its concessions on trade, but ending up singling out Pakistan as the only non-recipient of its trade concessions. Pakistan disappointed by sticking to its old stance of making all economic progress conditional to the resolution of political disputes.

More and more “observer” states are flocking to the SAARC. Afghanistan is the 8th member and has joined the consensus asking Pakistan to relent on a land transit route from India to Central Asia. But Pakistan, despite the fact that it has been crowing about its unique position to become a trading hub in the region, chickened out again. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz kept trying to disarm the audience by claiming that Pakistan was not scared of trading with India; after all it was trading with China whose goods had flooded the Pakistani market, but his “peace-first” rhetoric sounded hollow.

Afghanistan as the new member went public on its first beef when President Hamid Karzai told a US newspaper that Pakistan was supporting the Taliban. Iran was given permission to join as an “observer” next year. Three of the “observer” countries — China, South Korea and Japan — sent their foreign ministers to the summit. The United States and the European Union, also “observers”, sent high-level representatives. Everybody made great speeches and lauded the idea of SAARC, but nothing substantial happened during the Summit.

Nepal, the other “boat-shaker”, came out in favour of giving China the member status by further expanding the area of operation of SAARC. Unlike other observer countries, such as Japan and South Korea, China shares contiguous borders with four of the SAARC states. If you look at the way the “observer” status has been granted, the juxtaposition of “continental” China with “oceanic” United States looks odd. In any case if SAARC is not taking off with its present outreach, why not expand it and see what happens? Breaking out of the prison of an Indo-Pak deadlock might release new energies.

The world seems to be keen on SAARC but not its old members. At the global level, some countries are realistic about the limitations of the organisation. Russia, for instance, is not keen, and is of the view that SAARC “is still evolving and has a long way to go”. In fact, Russia points to the possibility of the SAARC states pulling out of the prison of South Asia and breathing more freely in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Mr Shaukat Aziz too admitted that a “SWOT analysis” would show that SAARC had not been able to leverage its full potential, “leverage” being the favourite word for our prime minister these days. The other new word was “unbundle”, when he said he had “unbundled” the Iranian gas pipeline from Indo-Pak disputes. But why not “unbundle” Kashmir too?

Is India the six hundred pound gorilla in the room? Is New Delhi the regional spoiler that suffocates all its “peripheral” neighbours with its size and tough bargaining? Maybe it is. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to trump Pakistan by isolating it with his statement that, by the end of 2007, India will have concluded free trade agreements with all countries of the SAARC except Pakistan, which was unwilling to reciprocate even India’s gesture of granting Pakistan the Most Favoured Nation status. Then he cracked the whip: India will give “zero duty” concession to all its trade partners except Pakistan.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is known for his smoothness but said things quite out of character for a banker. He said outstanding political issues should be sorted out first before free trade materialised between the two countries — a brief given by the establishment. But he must have wondered why he was losing India’s capital investment in Pakistan along with the Arabs of the Gulf. Let’s face it. Pakistan’s remains a non-smooth state with a smooth premier. Where was President Pervez Musharraf when we needed him? Where was his out-of-the-box thinking?

India rolled forward with radical visa concessions to all including Pakistan. Pakistan sat there and watched, its outlook marred once again by an obsession with Kashmir although there was no need to be so costive about it. Pakistan can show its internal political audit that it was giving nothing away on Kashmir while going ahead with the free trade negotiations. Suddenly the inventiveness of General Musharraf is gone and Shaukat Aziz is changing his stripes. Pakistan must be the rare country that uses a banker prime minister to block trade.

Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa was most radical of all and must have caused a moment of light-headedness in the Pakistani delegation when he called on the member states to adopt a “common currency” to speed up regional integration. Many must have smiled behind their sleeves at this “quantum jump”, but it points to Sri Lanka’s more educated outlook on the future of South Asia. The region has hardly any future even if the states don’t go to war again. Water is scarce and the states may not be integrating because they know they are going to cheat on each other on water.

This year’s SAARC summit was a disappointment as usual. Are we fated for another disappointment next year?

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\12\story_12-4-2007_pg3_1

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Re: SAARC summit begins, guarded silence on terror

afghan economy is literally driven through pakistan. its very important afghans are part of saarc and they prosper from the war torn hell it is now.