Editorial
The 17th SAARC summit
Let the bridges be built on a stronger base
The leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) are meeting in a summit in Maldives for the 17th time since the regional forum's inception in 1985.
With the relations between the two major players, India and Pakistan, showing signs of thawing, hopes for further progress in regional cooperation are also rising.
The Indian prime minister Monmohan Singh said before his departure for Maldives that trade liberalisation under the South Asia Free Trade Area Agreement (SAFTA) would be high on the agenda. So, there is reason for headway in this regard. And Pakistan's offering India the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status reciprocating similar move made by India earlier on, is certainly good augury.
Bangladesh also hopes to gain from the bilateral talks on the summit sidelines between its Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart in breaking the present deadlock on Teesta water sharing.
Given the financial turmoil in the highly industrialised West, there is little room left for the governments and the peoples of the SAARC region but to build their levels of connectivity, cooperation and togetherness on a firmer ground. Trade, for example, is one such most promising area of cooperation, though, so far, a least explored one. Because, the SAARC nations have been able to trade only five percent of the total volume they have been transacting with the rest of the world. So it is only a matter of goodwill among the regional nations to make the most of this colossal opportunity for mutual growth and development through trade and investment.
That said, the looming dangers of climate change also provide the SAARC countries the biggest push to Build Bridges (the summit theme) on a stronger ground. This will help develop a rapid response mechanism to face natural disasters as well as establish the promised Saarc Seed Bank and a buffer food stock to meet any shortage during times of adversity.
Let us hope that the Maldives SAARC summit would provide an impetus to the long awaited accelerated phase of cooperation in the region.
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