The 11th SAARC Summit
A Landmark Achievement

By Laxmi Bahadur Vaidya

AFTER a gap of over three years since the tenth summit of 1998 in Sri-Lanka the historic 11th SAARC Summit was held in Kathmandu which can be considered as a great achievement even though the atmosphere was not so favourable due to deteriorating political relation between the two member states India and Pakistan. Both the member nations are nuclear powers of South Asia with 85 per cent of the total population of the region. Unfortunately, the two neighbours have amassed their troops along the border, after the December 13th terrorist attack on the Indian parliament. It has posed a great threat to bilateral peace, security and stability as well as in the region as a whole.

For the first time Nepal had hosted the summit back in 1987 and after a gap of 14 years she hosted the summit for the second time. The Kathmandu Summit reactivated the stalled SAARC the process and it is hoped that the process will be continued without interruption in the future. Even at the time of critical juncture the two leaders of the member states of South Asia, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India had participated at the Kathmandu summit leading the delegation of their respective countries. It is a matter of immense joy and satisfaction for the South Asia region as a whole that both the leaders of India and Pakistan are, it seems, very serious and anxious to work for the welfare and benefit of the people of the region.

The 11th SAARC Summit adopted a 56-point Kathmandu Declaration and decided to meet in Pakistan in the beginning of 2003. The heads of state and government of the SAARC who had participated in the summit made commitments on various core issues such as poverty alleviation, accelerated economic cooperation, development of the social sector, terrorism and people to people contact.

The Kathmandu summit was the first of the new century and also of the new millennium. The summit has a special importance due to the fact that the SAARC leaders after an interval of three years unanimously acknowledged that in the past the activities of the SAARC was slow to catch up the objectives, principles and goals of the regional body. Now the leaders realised that past gains must be consolidated and the present decisions must be implemented strictly and vigorously, keeping in mind the need for a regional focus and orientation and finding the solution to take new decisions.

To accelerate cooperation in the core areas of trade, finance and investment the leaders accepted the vision of a phased and planned process moving towards the formation of the South Asian Economic Union. They also stressed the need on equitable sharing of regional cooperation to achieve and maintain a minimum acceptable level of socio-economic development in each member state.

Regarding the poverty alleviation in the region the Kathmandu Declaration has accorded top priority with sustained measures to extend rural micro-credit programme and labour intensive technology focussing on women and the poor. A great majority of the people in the SAARC region is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Taking this stark reality the Declaration has accorded special importance to the agricultural sector which is appropriate and desirable to eradicate poverty from the region. In this regard a decision has been taken to reconstitute the independent poverty commission to review the progress as well as to suggest relevant and effective measures.

The Kathmandu Declaration has reaffirmed to address the problem of terrorism in a comprehensive and holistic manner because it violated fundamental values of the United Nations and the SAARC charter. In this 21st century it is the greatest menace to peace and security in the world. All the South Asian leaders are unanimous on the view that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, is a challenge to all states. Hence, it cannot be tolerated on any ground whether it is ideological, religious, humanitarian or philosophical.

During the summit the two important conventions namely SAARC convention on preventing and combating the Trafficking in women and children for prostitution and SAARC convention on Regional Arrangement for the promotion of child welfare in South Asia were signed. It is certainly a major achievement for addressing the plight of many women and children in the region. Due to the lack of a regional mechanism to coordinate remedial measures the women and children of the South Asian region suffered a good deal from the scourge of trafficking and prostitution. Now the South Asian nations came together to jointly fight the heinous crimes that keep many South Asian women and children exploited. Besides, the two above mentioned conventions, four regional conventions and agreements have already been signed since the inception of SAARC. These are SAARC Food Security Storage, SAARC Regional Convention against terrorism, SAARC Regional Convention against Drug Abuse and SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangements.

In order to achieve the goals of common interests by promoting collective self-reliance among the South Asian nations and ensuring peace, security and stability, the Regional Association has established. However, the political climate of the South Asia region has not been conducive to enhance such cooperation due to misunderstanding and lack of trust between the two neighbour India and Pakistan. To avert the crisis the leaders of the two neighbours must explore ways and means so that the problems can be resolved in a peaceful and friendly manner because the destiny and future of SAARC depends on how these neighbours behave with each other. If this region is to forge ahead along the path of the European Union (EU) or the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) the SAARC leaders must substitute the hostility, mistrust among nations with goodwill and harmonious relations.

Skyline

By Ronald Nash

ONCE, where Orchard Road now winds, was a nutmeg plantation. The East, famous for its spices, brought merchants here too. The nutmeg was decimated in a Moluccan blight in 1855. The plants vanished, but the early spice farmers lived on. They gave their names to the streets and alleyways near today’s Orchard Road. Cuppage, Cairnhill, Oxley, Prinsep and Scott…

The 1910 sepia reveals Orchard Road as an avenue. Mature trees cut out the sunlight. People stroll, bearing water and goods. The better-off process in elegant carriages. Towards the tattered edges of this yellowing picture, beyond hedges and rope-penned paths, there is not a building in sight. Far off to the right, where horizon meets sky, only more trees. Today’s jungle of skyscrapers and shopping malls is a distant figment.

At the intersection by Tangs a traffic light turns red. Our aging Nissan taxi pulls up with a jolt. Alongside as we sit there, Daimlers and Mercedes, BMWs, even the occasional Rolls. Singapore’s modern elite has reluctantly stopped in its tracks. Sogo, Isetan, Tangs; Wisma Atria and Far East Shopping Centre; Galeries Lafayette, Alfred Dunhill, Georg Jensen: the Hard Rock Cafe. We have just wooshed past most of the elegance of the western world. Even Fifth Avenue cannot beat this. Across another intersection, the latest in polished red granite elegance: Ngee Ann City, dwarfing all for finery and sheer size.

The flood of midday shoppers ebbs. The walking green turns red. The green traffic light releases the fancy limousines to show their paces. They rev up and whiz past double-deckers, the Singapore sightseeing tram, and creaking Malay rickshaws, in a bee-line for Orchard Road’s infinite horizon.

Further down, we walk past shopping centres of an earlier ilk. Specialists’ Centre with its branch of John Little, registered in Singapore since the 1850s. Outside, in the afternoon heat, whispy office girls file at another crossing. They cross to Centre Point, pacing to the babbling of an electronic signal. Specialists’ is strangely jaded beside today’s ritzy malls. But even this timewarp is ephemeral. As if to catch up on lost chances, a process of furious renewal has been begun inside these old, department store walls. Shops are reshaped under our very eyes. A pneumatic drill splits the afternoon.

Across from Specialists’, beneath the looming concrete of the Phoenix Hotel and Singapore Telecom which touches the sky with its spidery steel fingers, lies Emerald Hill Road, ready to take us back through sepia mists to the nutmegs of distant times.

The first owner of the Hill was William Cuppage. He received it in 1845 in permanent grant for his 5000 tree nutmeg estate. He built two residences, Erin Lodge and Fern Cottage. When he died in 1872 the neighbouring street, today home to hawkers and pavement restaurants selling Tiger and satay, was named after him. William’s son-in-law, Edwin Koek, built a new house, Claregrove and then, gradually, the Hill was sold off in lots. By 1901 Emerald Hill Road was in its present configuration, and by 1940 it embraced over one hundred residences.

11 o clock. The sun is near its height and the humidity drips. In latter twentieth century Emerald Hill a brass bell clangs. The Singapore Chinese Girls School is finishing for the day. Small girls in sky blue tunics giggle and skip past antique baroque terraces, little guessing the life of Chinese gentlefolk they once held. On they go, chattering away and clutching satchels and exercise books. On, over the crossing at Orchard Road with its weird babbling. On, past Specialists’, towards the MRT Subway and the daily journey home. The afternoon will bring telephone gossip with friends, fast food and TV soaps. Later on, under parental duress, yet more school work and preparations for a new day.

Away to the left, beyond Buyong and where Orchard Road crosses a hazy and distant skyline, a new mountain of cranes and steel cobwebs is burgeoning its way up into the afternoon sky.

(The author is the British envoy to Nepal)