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Thus spoke the Indian Prime Minister before the SAARC information
ministers. If this was the passionate outburst from the leader of the SAARC’s
biggest member, then it is high time – the SAARC’s 12th summit in
Islamabad is knocking on our doors — for members of South Asia’s biggest conglomerate to pull up their socks together and go for some real action, segregating contentious issues from the achievable objectives.
If optimism has dawned prior to the summit, the recent momentous decision to open up and restart some warm ties between New Delhi and Islamabad — a sine qua non for SAARC’s success — should be held positively responsible. It is believed that the unusual Ramadan ceasefire from the midnight of November 25 from both sides of the LoC, has added extra synergy for the Islamabad summit. Prime Minister Jamali of Pakistan hopes that the ceasefire will provide a boost to normalise bilateral relations. That is indication enough that as the host, he along with President Musharraf, could take steps to make SAARC move ahead. It is a desire that members of SAARC have been hoping for a long, long time.
Putting at rest all speculations and uncertainties at abeyance, the 12th Summit of the South Asian grouping is slated in Islamabad from January 4-6, 2004. As usual, the summit could have suffered from some amnesia, but not with the confirmation of Mr. Vajpayee attending the summit that he did before leaving for the CHOGM meet.
It is time to examine what progress the summit can possibly make towards shaping a common future of hope and development. Unlike the last summit in Kathmandu, merely expressing commitments or giving calls to oft-repeated goals once again will make the organisation redundant and bring it disrepute in the global arena. Inability to forge a concrete regional bloc for its own gain could clearly tell on the leadership qualities of the region. Merely expressing satisfaction over the summits being held as annual rituals, as Nepalese PM Deuba did in the last summit, will not serve any real purpose.
“Attaining some progress will open the future vistas for the region,” says B. K. Bhattacharya, Dean, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi. Failing to do that will mean writing the death warrant of the whole organisation. For, there are “issues and promises galore in the subcontinent which call for a multilateral approach”…in the process, “emotional and historical differences are cold-shouldered politi-cally”, analyses Bhattacharya.
The summit comes after much spadework, both diplomatic and political. The eleventh summit in January 2002, in Kathmandu, Nepal, was held in the backdrop of several harsh realities and diplomatic, political tantrums. Though slated for January this year, the 12th Summit was postponed more than once. If the two biggest members of SAARC, India and Pakistan, keep their bilateral feuds burning, the whole organisation cannot be blamed for inaction, lack of mutual trust and confidence among its members.
SAARC is 18 years old. Quite logically, the idea of addressing issues of common concern guided SAARC’s formation in 1985, though the spadework had begun much earlier in 1980 at the behest of Dhaka. Since the SAARC members shared a common geographical contiguity, cultural similarity, political history and many other similar features, coming together on a singular common platform would augur well to solve a plethora of problems that the countries shared in common. However, ideas may always be good but they are difficult to implement as subsequent events of SAARC have revealed.
Eleven summits — to make SAARC a viable and profitable regional entity — spanning 18 valuable years have been held thus far. Going by SAARC’s progress report, except for addressing certain supplementary issues ranging from drug trafficking to child abuse and that too with modest progress, the core issues of flexing economic rules individually for multilateral gain (read a decisive move towards a Free Trade Area) still remain half-baked, and half-addressed till now. Negotiations on preferential and free trade under SAPTA and SAFTA jargons still continue. On the other hand, the benefit accruing from other regional arrangements like NAFTA, OPEC, EU, and lately ASEAN is there for all to see. It is not without reason that there is hope that the Islamabad summit has to strike a positive note to keep the tempo for future summits going.
Mildly put, the Eleventh Summit last year in Kathmandu was a flop show. The 56-point Declaration had space only for commitments for the very old, oft-repeated burning issues in South Asia. The summits over the years have given only promises with no firm action on the ground. There is nothing except-ional to show as a fruitful product of SAARC’s coopera-tion in all these valuable years. “SAARC had not achieved anything substantive since it was formed. It is yet to formulate, let alone implement a single regional project,” said Bangladesh PM Begum Zia during the last summit. The reason, Begum Zia said, was because “national self-assertion still impedes regional cooperation”. The words of the Begum still hold relevance today.
The last Summit had nothing concrete to boast of. The Heads of State reaffirmed their commitment to regional cooperation through SAARC, stressed equitable sharing of the benefits of regional cooperation and expressed their resolve to promote South Asian regional identity. Incidentally, there is nothing to show off on this front, though some unity was displayed at the WTO Cancun meet.
The Heads of Government agreed to accelerate cooperation in the core areas of trade, finance and investment to realise the goal of an integrated South Asian economy and a free trade area in a phased manner. But, already many deadlines to implement the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) and South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) have been missed. The deadline given by the Kathmandu Summit, to come up with a Draft Treaty Framework by the end of 2002 has been bypassed. The fact is that the SAARC leaders had planned to launch SAFTA by 2001; they shelved it at the Tenth Summit in Colombo, preferring instead to agree on the SAPTA or preferential arrangement, a lesser goal yet to be achieved in toto. Not satisfied, the SAARC Finance and Planning Ministers meet in Islamabad last year endorsed an action plan for full operationalisation of SAPTA and move faster towards SAFTA.
The Kathmandu summit made a review of the SAARC activities aimed at poverty alleviation and decided to reinvigorate them in the context of regional and global commitments, with a sense of urgency. The region is still one of the poorest and backward, with millions of the population deep in malnutrition and economic vulnerability. The SAARC ministerial meet on poverty alleviation last year called for a faster move towards SAPTA and SAFTA in this regard. But without sharing the experiences on poverty alleviation among the countries, like the efforts of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, and the Indian experience, this issue will remain where it is.
The eleventh summit discussed social, cultural and international issues. Members touched upon population stabilization, empowerment of women, youth mobilization, HRD development, health and children. The reality is that South Asia hosts one of the world’s densely-populated regions, with large numbers of illiterates and unused or misdirected manpower. AIDS has become a major challenge in the region. For consolation, two conventions were signed. One related to trafficking in women and the other concerning the welfare of children. In any case, the gap between signing conventions and implementing them is a major task in the SAARC region.
There is no unity in international affairs among the voices in the region. The countries are being tied up with individual economic grants, aids and defence requirements in their own ways. Backed by historical and border differences, the seven members have no uniform meaning of terrorism, multilateralism, regional cooperation or common security. It is highly impossible to ignore ground realities in the region and talk of international issues in a common tone.
The heads of state in Kathmandu discussed terrorism. Members expressed their commitment to fight terrorism globally and regionally. Ironically, terrorism is in full free flow ranging from cross border terrorism, narco-terrorism to Maoist terrorism. The 1987 SAARC convention on terrorism is yet to see implementation. In fact, terrorism bedevils Indo-Pak relations and possesses the much needed firepower to stall SAARC’s meaningful progress. The members before calling for implementation of the 1373 UNSC resolution must take concrete steps within to clean up the menace first.
If the Kathmandu summit was a past, the coming Islamabad summit is a reality and members should make sincere efforts to take some decisive action to realise a few of the immediate objectives. Any real move towards free trade has to overcome some real hurdles.
The sixth round of the Committee of Experts (CoE) meet held in Kathmandu recently discussed all 25 articles of the draft treaty for free trade, but differences still persist. The meet discussed issues like a time table for member countries to adhere to free trade, a revenue compensatory mechanism for the weak members, tariff and non-tariff barriers, and on rules of origin. The 12th summit while deliberating on these critical areas of free trade will have to see that the interests of the LDC countries are kept intact. In general, any decision on this front positively will add value to the summit itself and give a big boost to the sagging morale of the organisation.
Among the critical issues, providing subsidy to LDC countries in the expansion of regional trade is one. Nepal, for example, wants facilities like adding up to 20 percent value added tax (VAT) on their cost price. Regional LDC partners, including Bangladesh, seek facilities to include more products on the ‘negative list’. To make up for the revenue loss due to free trade, these countries want them to allow imposing higher internal duties on major products imported from developing partners. The issue is of formulation of the revenue compensatory mechanism and creation of a fund by the developing partners to make up for the revenue losses of LDC members. The CoE has drafted 10 years for LDC, and 7 years for others to introduce SAFTA or a free trade pact, once it is given the green signal. Also in the same forum, New Delhi and Islamabad agreed to implement a few principles of preferential trade under SAPTA. Whether this will include Pakistan granting MFN status to India is to be seen.
The contentious trade issues are not insurmountable, given the political will. “There is no reason why SAARC cannot handle these areas. ASEAN has done it successfully while expanding its numbers from six to ten. Only political will is required,” Dean of IIFT, Bhattacharya asserted. Yes, ASEAN had showed what regional cooperation means despite political and other differences. PM Vajpayee did not miss this point in his address at the SAARC information ministers meet in New Delhi, when he gave a call to himself and to the SAARC leaders to learn from the ASEAN example and that of post-Cold War Europe where political differences and bitter hostilities have been set aside to evolve arrangements for regional and sub-regional cooperation. The 12th Summit has to at least deliver a few economic outputs to keep SAARC on the move for real. The proposals of the Committee of Experts could come in handy here.
SAARC is hostage to the on-and-off Indo-Pak tension and the issue will continue to hold center-stage until the two sides take bold decisions on terrorism and Kashmir. One option already mooted is to freeze the Kashmir issue for sometime and let SAARC move on the economic front. If Pakistan is not willing to aggress to this, the other option could be to healthily discuss bilateral issues including Kashmir on the sidelines of the annual summits without spoiling the entire Summit exercise. Moving away from Pakistan through BIMSTEC and other efforts will serve no real purpose, according to Prof. S.D. Muni, School of International studies, JNU, New Delhi. Of course, bilateral economic free trade pacts like the India-Sri Lanka agreement cannot be seen as impediments to SAARC, but can be replicated on a broader level.
SAARC moving forward is in the interest of all the members, more so, in a region marked sharply by multiple opportunities and multiple problems. Making the organisation hostage to political or border disputes is a sheer waste of resources and time in organising summits annually.
SAARC so far, has been a forum of wide potential, but missed opportunities. Its share of global trade is still hovering around the one per cent mark and its informal trade exceeds the formal one. Opening up the unexplored opportunities during the 2004 summit could carry the SAARC boat forward without challenging logic or mocking economics any more. Right now, a few first steps on common economic pursuit is needed. The jargon for any South Asian economic union can wait for now.
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