SAARC warms up in Islamabad

[January 6, 2004 - 3.30 GMT] 

The 12th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which should have been held here in Islamabad early 2003, opened Sunday morning. The venue was the impressive Jinnah Convention Center. The current thaw in Indo Pakistan relations came as a relief to the other member countries, which had dismissed SAARC as a talk shop.

Another significant move was the Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff’s decision to push forward his democratically elected Prime Minister Mir Zafarulla Khan to take on the Chairmanship of SAARC for the next term as the host nation’s leader.

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister of Nepal Surya Bahadur Thapa openly welcomed, in their opening addresses, the vision and courage demonstrated by the leaders of India and Pakistan in their efforts to resolve bilateral issues. Further, President Kumaratunga’s frank view of the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) was much appreciated.

Among the positives of the day was the SAARC Social Charter, mooted in 1998 being adopted. Compared to the Colombo summit in 1998 and Katmandu in 2002 the on-going summit is the most comfortable for the other five nations due to the noticeable reduction in tensions between the big powers in the region India and Pakistan. These two nations have been at war on three occasions since gaining independence from Britain.

The 1998 summit, which Colombo hosted in its Golden Jubilee year, attracted the global media more because it was the first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan after the two nations conducted nuclear detonations.

Yesterday the leaders went to a retreat, in an undisclosed location due to security concerns. The Summit ends on Tuesday, January 6.

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Last Updated Date: January 06, 2004  -3.30 GMT.