All Set For Summit
EFFECTIVELY quashing any lingering doubts
regarding the holding of the eleventh edition of the summit conference of South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Arjun
Jung Bahadur Singh told the press Wednesday that planned summit was going ahead as
scheduled and the preparations for staging the summit were almost complete. Nepal has been
preparing for the summit, which it is hosting for the second time, for months now. Though
there was never any actual possibility that the summit, being held after a longish
postponement, would again be put off, the recent tension between India and Pakistan had
raised apprehensions about its fate, though Nepal had not let that fact come into its
full-swing preparations for the summit. With the State Minister’s disclosure
Wednesday that all the heads of state or government of the SAARC member countries had
already sent confirmation of their participation in the summit, a spruced-up Kathmandu now
is all set to play host to the SAARC leaders. In a further indication of the summit
process being on a final track, the minister disclosed that the draft of the Kathmandu
Declaration to be adopted at the conclusion of the summit on January 6 had already been
prepared and had been sent to member countries.
Nepal rightly attaches great importance to
the upcoming summit, not only because it is the host country but also because the meeting
is expected to launch several regional initiatives as well as give a fillip to the ongoing
programmes. On the anvil are two conventions related to women and children as well as the
adoption of a clear policy on making the region a free trade zone within a set time frame.
No less importantly, the meeting, taking place as it does during a time of a global war on
terror, should certainly take up the issue of the scourge of terrorism affecting the
region. Ways and means to fully implement the regional convention on terrorism have to be
found by the leaders. For, the benefits of regional cooperation on combating terrorism
need hardly be repeated as the region continues to see its share of murder and mayhem.
Nepal is also hoping that the Indian and Pakistani leaders will have an opportunity to
have informal discussions on the sidelines of the summit, perhaps at the planned retreat
in Nagarkot. If the SAARC leaders are able to achieve some results that go towards making
the region peaceful and give some of its teeming poor hopes for a better future, the
Kathmandu summit will have proven to be a noteworthy one.
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