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Kathmandu Monday November 05, 2001 Kartik 20, 2058.
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SAARC summit
The much-delayed eleventh SAARC summit could be
held early in January, barring unforeseen developments. The dates are more or less
confirmed. Much has happened in the region and beyond since the last summit and another
periodic get together of the heads of state or government of the SAARC Seven would provide
a timely opportunity to take a collective look at the changed scenario. Such collective
exercises are indeed part of the raison d’etre of regional groupings, quite apart
from their formal charters and objectives and agendas spelled out in black and white. For
this and other reasons, one earnestly hopes the summit does materialize this time. Having
said that one must hasten to add that the summit, when it comes, should not be used by any
one country as a platform for its own propaganda pitch. The discussions should be
substantive, serious, constructive and well worth the expenses that the whole SAARC
exercise entails for its members. This membership has often been described as a poor man’s
club. In this connection it should be recalled that the preparations that Nepal had made
for the summit at its originally scheduled date turned out to be a waste when India saw
fit to scuttle that the event because it did not like to confer any legitimacy, however
tangentially, on General Musharraf by sitting together with him at the same conference
table. Those expenses should be compensated in some fashion or other.
Now that a SAARC summit is clearly on the cards,
it should be reiterated that it should take place for all the right reasons. It should
bring together the top leaders of the region to make further strides for the common
regional good. Apart from the collective look at regional and international developments
mentioned above, they will have much on their plate, including progress on the development
of a free trade area, a common approach to the World Trade Organisation, the issue of
genetically modified foodstuff, the scourge of aids, trafficking in drugs and arms,
trafficking in humans, and yes terrorism, among others. Some of these issues would also be
covered by a social charter, another area of SAARC concern. SAARC has been criticized for
lacking a single central theme to bind it together, such as anti-communism for ASEAN and a
common market for the European Community (at least in their formative stages). A better
track record of delivering on the promises would help allay some of that criticism. SAARC
summits, like other regional and international summits, also offer the chance for casual
but nonetheless vital contacts on the sidelines. Such contacts at bilateral level are
especially important in the context of SAARC whose charter explicitly forbids the raising
of bilateral issues among its members. One hopes a Kathmandu summit will see some of this
bilateral mileage also. Allied to this is the hope that India, the dominant player in the
region, is not using a regional summit merely as a back-up arrangement for a casual
meeting between its prime minister and the Pakistani president. Similar arrangements at
the venue of the UN General Assembly in New York have been on and off since the summit
between the two South Asian leaders that took place in the Indian city of Agra. Not that
any meeting between Messrs Vajpayee and Musharraf is not welcome, wherever it takes place.
But putting together a SAARC summit as a thin cover for such happentence would be a
mockery of SAARC itself and a bad precedent.
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