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SAARC Summit Fails On All Counts
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India-Pak crisis hinders SAARC success |
By Our Own Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Jan 5 (Islam Online) - Much to the frustration of the South Asian people, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, being held at present in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, seems to be heading no where. There seems to be little progress if any over the last SAARC summit held in 1998.
Though it is being claimed that the hosting of the summit in the Himalayan kingdom is itself a big success given the charged atmosphere in the region and a looming Indo-Pak conflict, there seems to be no consolation for around 1300 million people of the region.
The heads of the two warring nations, India and Pakistan, have so far avoided contact and despite efforts from smaller member-States of the forum there seems to be no hope of either formal or informal meeting between the two before the summit folds up tomorrow.
This standoff between the two major nations of the region is frustrating for the forum's smaller members (Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bhutan) that make up the SAARC.
For them it has failed to deliver the economic prosperity they were promised when the forum was launched 17 years ago in 1985.
Leave the talk of emulating the successful Association of South East Asian Region (ASEAN) in the neighborhood to the east, SAARC is yet to acquire basic contours.
Ever since its inception this forum of one of the most backward regions in the world has been hamstrung by the ongoing hostility between India and Pakistan.
The organization is supposed to meet at the summit level every year, but the chronic tension between India and Pakistan has meant that the meet now being held is delayed by complete two years.
In 1999 India refused to sit down with General Pervez Musharraf, who had overthrown the democratically-elected government of Nawaz Sharif in a military coup. India called him a military dictator and not representative of his people.
The bitterness in bilateral relations between India and Pakistan has not only created obstructions in the convening of the summit in the past but has not allowed the agenda of the economic progress in the region to take shape.
Despite various announcement in the past, the free economic trade zone between the seven countries of the forum is still a dream. This time round political issues and tension between the two nuclear neighbours have ensured that this crucial issue does not even figure as an important subject of discussion during the summit.
India has tried to reach out to other SAARC countries. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee made public, soon after his arrival in Kathmandu, a Rs 500 million social sector assistance to Nepal.
This assistance, announced during a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries, will be spent over a period of two years on identified projects in the education and rural development sectors. Other than this magnanimous Indian gesture there is no other particular positive pointer from Kathmandu.
And it makes this SAARC summit look like a failure.
Analysts fear that there may not be many more positive developments to emerge from the meeting.
This is in part because the SAARC constitution says that the organization should not discuss 'bilateral' issues. Jaswant Singh, Indian foreign minister, cited this argument to defend India's refusal to meet Pakistani officials on the sidelines of SAARC even though officials and the prime minister of India and Pakistan president are in the same hotel.
The Pakistani president, meanwhile, has said that SAARC's failure to discuss bilateral issues is the reason why the organization is so crippled.
In the meantime the foreign ministers and senior officials from all the seven countries are giving final touches to the summit declaration which is expected to come out strongly against terrorism in all forms reflecting India's concerns and giving a positive thrust to poverty alleviation and regional economic co-operation.
There will be four paragraphs in the declaration relating to terrorism taking into account the 28 September 2001 U.N. Security Council resolution which mandates countries to take action against states sponsoring terrorism.
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