SAARC’s 20-point agenda

Fear lingers that once delegates return home, they will forget about the document they just signed, agreed upon.

Trying to critique the closing agenda or agreement of a summit is a thankless task. Any points of disagreement that may exist are papered over, vague promises of future action are made and then everyone goes home feeling very satisfied with themselves. The recently-concluded Saarc summit in the Maldives followed that model to a tee. The 20-point closing agenda adopted by member countries is impossible to disagree with, filled as it as with high-sounding rhetoric and plans to strengthen regional cooperation. The devil, as always, is in the details. High on the agenda at the Saarc summit was the need to start effectively implementing the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta). The agreement was first signed in 2004, vowed to gradually eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers between South Asian countries and is modelled on the European Union. The goal is to make South Asia a completely free trade zone. The Saarc summit reiterated that but precious little was revealed about how that would be translated into reality.

Other feel-good measures mentioned in the closing agenda are getting the countries to promote the region with a ‘Destination South Asia’ campaign and pledging to work together on disaster management and free flow of capital. Again, these pledges are unobjectionable. It is just that the fear lingers that once the delegations return home from the Maldives, they will forget all about the document they just signed and agreed upon, as has happened so often in the past. This is not to say that the Saarc summit had no value. The region is fraught with tension, particularly in the Indian subcontinent, and so any chance for the leaders of these countries to hold discussions in an informal setting should not be scoffed at. A meeting on the sidelines between Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Dr Manmohan Singh was followed by positive comments from both sides. However, we have seen this happen many times in the past as well, such as when then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee came by bus to Pakistan in early 1999 and met his counterpart, then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif. That was followed by Kargil, a few months later! So the security establishments of both nations need to respect the words and intentions of their civilian leaders for there to be a durable peace.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2011.