23rd SAARC Ministerial Meeting
Reflections On Achievements

By Narayan Upadhyay

THE SAARC Process, that has enshrined the ideal of greater cooperation among the seven nations of South Asia ever since its establishment in 1985, received a new fillip after the successful completion of the 23rd Council of Ministers' meeting held in Kathmandu.

Issues

Among the achievements made by the meeting are that the member nations vowed to join hands in alleviating poverty, giving high priority to economic and trade issues, curbing the trafficking of women and children for prostitution and suppressing terrorism in South Asia. These three important issues figured high among the 24 agendas, discussed by the seven foreign ministers during their Kathmandu sojourn last fortnight.

According to SAARC Secretary Q.A.M.A Rahim, all activities of the SAARC are ultimately aimed at its overarching main goal namely the alleviation of poverty. It may be prudent to note that South Asia houses about 40 per cent of the poor of the world and is poorer than Sub-Saharan nations, the poorest region in the world, in terms of absolute poverty. In addition, the leaders of the region know that without controlling the increase in the number of the poor, all other SAARC activities will not have much meaning.

The 23rd session of the ministers, held after the 11th SAARC Summit that was itself held after a gap of three years mainly due to the India-Pakistan problems, gave high priority to the reduction of poverty in the region. It asked the SAARC Secretary General to prepare a poverty alleviation profile.

The profile will be aimed at detailing ways and measures to fight against the abject poverty of the region. The secretariat and SAARC Poverty Alleviation Commission are working together in this regard. The last Summit held in Kathmandu in January this year has directed the General Secretary to explore the possibility of opening the third window in the South Asian Development Fund. The Fund receives about five million dollars per year from member nations to undertake its different programmes.
The Fund has already two windows. The first window is undertaking feasibility studies of implementing regional projects and the second is financing of these projects.

The 23rd meeting has approved many SAARC projects for the alleviation of poverty. These projects, however, have to be placed before the governing board of South Asian Economic Fund to be approved.
On the economic coopertion front, the Council of Ministers, the main decision making body of SAARC, decided to hold the another round of talks on the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA), "the most important activity that has been formalized under the regional economic cooperation."

Under SAPTA, tariffs on 5,000 items have been cut by ten to hundred per cent and concessional facilities have been given to the member nations on the exportable and importable goods. The fourth round of talks will try to enlarge the list of tradable goods to be benefited with deeper tariff cuts. After the final meeting on SAPTA next month, the first phase of eventual establishment of a South Asian Economic Union will be completed. SAPTA, and the South Asian Custom Union are the two other phases towards the final establishment of the Economic Union.

The ministers further decided to put an additional protocol to the Convention of Suppression of Terrorism, which became operational after the SAARC leaders signed it in 1987. Because of the new scenario that emerged after 9/11, adoption of the resolution number 1373 and the international convention on the suppression of financing of terrorism by the UN Security Council, the SAARC nations also felt a need to upgrade its convention on the suppression of terrorism. The ministers decided that the senior officials assisted by some legal experts sit together to chart out the protocol to be added to the convention.

They also discussed about the social development of the region. The Indian foreign minister's proposal to hold a meeting on HIV/AIDS in India next month and Bangladesh's request to put arsenic contamination of water in the social agenda of discussion were also approved by the meeting. The council has also constituted an Autonomous Advocacy Group of Women Personalities of the SAARC. Creating awareness on gender issues of SAARC regions and to make recommendations to the SAARC bodies about these issuse are the objectives of the proposed group.

Decision to hold every SAARC Summit at a set date of the month of January was another important achievement of the session. They decided that the next summit will be held from January 5 to 20, 2003 in Islamabad. Moreover, they approved the Nepalese proposal for establishing SAARC Award, which carries 8,000 US dollars and a citation in prize. A seed fund of 200,000 US dollars will be set up for this.

Besides, the ministers also mooted about establishing a network of the arrangement among the police authorities of the region. The ministerial session also paved the way for a meeting of the SAARC police chiefs and their deputies after a gap of five years. Twenty-two police representatives, during a two-day meeting in Kathmandu agreed in principle to the Nepalese proposal to establish SAARCPOL, a regional police body. They also agreed for a greater cooperation among the law enforcement bodies on the exchange of information and expertise, greater interaction in the area of training of police officials of the member nations and sharing of experiences for the law enforcement among other issues.

These measures along with the notion of the establishment of the SAARCPOL, if ratified by the SAARC Standing Committee and the 12th SAARC Summit, will be helpful in controlling some of the pressing problems-terrorism, organized crimes, trafficking of women and children and drugs that have afflicted the region for quite some time. The police chiefs also reached the agreement to set up a new SAARC Organised Crime Offences Monitoring Desk. SAARC has already had two desks-SAARC Terrorist Offences Desk and SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk.

Instrumental

These achievements of the 23rd Ministerial meeting will provide the much-needed momentum to the process of SAARC, which has gone off the track for the last three years due to problems between India and Pakistan, the two prominent members of the region. However, after the organisation of the SAARC Summit in Kathmandu and then the 23rd Ministerial level meeting, SAARC is back on track. The latest ministerial level meeting has become instrumental in pushing forward the SAARC activities and giving more impetus to the SAARC process.

All The Way, It's Foul

By PNK

FOUL play and foul air! Both are high on the agenda of the people, they may not be general but those who got something out of the literacy campaign that unfolded many decades back.

They talk of sustainable development. Yes, it's happening at Johannesberg. Judges have come up with their views that the world needs to strengthen development and at the same time toughen up on the enforcement of the environmental laws. That's environmental justice. There can be no point to argue on this very issue as, it is thought, very few in this Himalayan country have the knack to come into grips with the real problem.

Some who are versed on the need to look at the smog in the air as a potential threat to the whole concept of sustainable development have been to the meet venue in South Africa and the few that are left behind and fuming. So, doesn't it prove that the air is foul.' If it hand't been, there wouldn't have been such hue and cry. It's lucky that winter still hasn't arrived otherwise the fog, the mist, the brick kilns and even for that matter the exhaled air by us (alcoholics and otherwise) would have really spoiled the whole composition of the air as designed by the Creator.

Maybe development is hampered by foul play and foul air. If the environment is degraded, polluted, repulsive and so on, how can development take place. But if development till date had not taken place, how could have the environment gone through the painful phase that it's going through. Maybe, as they have said, environment justice is somewhat missing.

Legislations are there, Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) is mandatory, a part of the Bagmati river has been cleaned, the number of door-to-door garbage collectors are minting money, Dhobikhola, Narayani River and so many other rivers are still polluted as hell, etc. The list is endless. One achievement and all goes ecstatic. Maybe it's the pill that goes to take you to the seventh heaven. But, as with the hallucination drug, the effects are not long lasting. After all you have to land with a bang.

It's all against the foul air that foul words have to vibrate around as sounds waves are supposed to. A tiger may roar, a dog bark, a cat mew or a cow moo but the human beings have so many ways of getting across their foul words. If it hadn't been for such types of words, a parliament wouldn't have been a fit arena for a verbal duel with the foulest of words hurled at the opponents. Fisticuffs come later, the words of missiles leads the way. And missiles are in no way fit for praise.

That's politics, after all. No foul words, no fair play. Getting out at anyone on the wrong footing needs some improvisation of words. That's what those in the political profession are used to. One may come near calling it some sort of agitation-beware of militancy. No one would come out and praise an opponent even if he acts out one of the noblest roles. It's against the principle of those in politics. So, going foul all the way is being in the limelight. Foul words from the vibration of the vocal cords of the person concerned has the power to fill the whole atmosphere with those ever-moving sound vibrations. Don't they create foul air besides all those smoke, exhaust fumes and so on? Of course, this needs no brain racking, rest assured.