Terror, trade, transit to dominate SAARC summit next week

NEW DELHI: Terrorism, trade and transit will be the three big themes at the landmark summit of an expanded South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation next week that will include Afghanistan as its eighth member.

The 14th SAARC summit, that takes place here April 3-4 at the Vigyan Bhavan convention centre, will underscore a larger global interest in the region with the United States, the European Union, China, Japan and South Korea participating as observers for the first time in the 22-year-old history of the regional grouping.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Bangladesh chief advisor to the interim administration Fakhruddin Ahmed, Bhutan Prime Minister Khandu Wangchuk, Nepal Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will attend the summit.

Foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea, Li Zhaoxing, Taro Aso and Song Min-soon respectively, will make brief presentations at the opening session of the summit. The US will be represented by Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia.

The meeting of the programme committee on Friday will kick off a list of official events in the run-up to the summit.

It will be followed by the 33rd meeting of the standing committee at the level of foreign secretaries over the next two days. The Council of Ministers meet on Monday a day before the two-day summit starts.

The focus will be on making the SAARC a more efficient organisation and move it towards implementing some of the crucial regional projects that have been long under discussion, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said.

The idea is to make the next 20 years of SAARC, as Manmohan Singh said at the last summit in Dhaka, different from the previous 20 years that was mostly preoccupied in producing grand-sounding documents but had little to show by way of result on the ground.

"As India's global stature grows and its economy continues to boom, it has a greater stake in promoting economic integration in the region," SD Muni, a South Asia expert said.

SAARC leaders will discuss the contours of a South Asian University, a large part of which will be based in India, the best in the world that attract best students and best faculty. An inter-governmental agreement will be signed to form the university before the details are worked out.

Other important intra-regional projects that will be discussed include a SAARC Development Fund, a Regional Telemedicine Network and a Regional Food Bank. The summit will focus on translating these ideas into reality by formulating a time-bound plan.

The LTTE's dramatic attack on a Sri Lankan Air Force base has goaded Sri Lanka to ask for a revision of the 1987 SAARC convention on suppression of terrorism and put terrorism on top of the agenda of the SAARC summit. Rajapakse is likely to raise the issue of growing terrorism in his country and how SAARC can help him in countering it.

India will press for more intra-regional cooperation in combating the common scourge of terrorism in the region. India's concerns about terrorism in the region is directly linked to its broader agenda of promoting greater connectivity and free trade in the region.

Connectivity, physical, economic and mental, is clearly the grand overarching theme of the SAARC summit that New Delhi is hosting after 12 years.

India will push for greater connectivity in South Asia with SAARC leaders expected to discuss proposals of SAARC Multi-Modal Transport Study to enhance rail, road and air links and economic integration through the elimination of trade barriers and freer flow of ideas.

With Afghanistan's inclusion in SAARC, India will push hard for a transit to Kabul through the land route which has been a stumbling block in its trade relations with Central Asia.

India will also make a pitch for harmonising and simplifying customs procedure and standardisation to simplify transit rules in the SAARC. 

According to New Delhi, these steps would help in implementing the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).

Pakistan's reluctance to adhere to its obligations has marred prospects of SAFTA, with New Delhi hoping that Islamabad will soon see the light and fulfil its commitment under SAFTA that became operational in July last year.