Are decks being cleared for SAARC summit?

Undoubtedly, certain developments in the South Asian region in recent time gave rise to speculations whether the overall political climate has worsened causing some irritation in the area where the situation was broadly healthy in the preceding year. The postponement of the scheduled 13th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for the second time and developments in Nepal marking the dismissal of an elected government definitely caused fissures in the region. India had cited Nepal situation and also security conditions in Bangladesh as reasons for being unable to attend the event. Now India is learnt to be keen to find a new date and is understood to have proposed to the present chairman of the SAARC, Pakistan, to hold the postponed summit within a month or so.

Postponement of SAARC summits is not a new phenomenon -- albeit the development cannot be anything enthusiastic if not based on consensus. SAARC have had such experience many times before causing temporary dismay in the grouping. The last summit in Pakistan was held only after long delay because of Indo-Pak bilateral problems. When a catastrophic earthquake with tsunami badly struck several South Asian countries at the fag end of 2004 the much-awaited 13th summit of the seven-nation SAARC scheduled for early January was deferred as all agreed that the heads of government cannot meet at a time when three of the seven members were struck by the disaster. But the second postponement stemming from India's decision not to attend citing political reasons was not acceptable to other members but no summit is possible without unanimity of all members. India might have felt that it had rationale behind its decision, but there can be no denying that as host nation Bangladesh felt laid down. After all, preparations and arrangements are no less a cumbersome task if not a Herculean one for a country like Bangladesh, and when it came close on the heels of first postponement.

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Earlier, the failure of the SAARC to hold summits on time was mostly due to Indo-Pak differences. The 11th and 12th summits were victims of this condition. Their ties took a qualitative change for the better from the beginning of last year and the process continued for the entire year with commendable gestures from both sides in the pursuit of good neighbourliness as well as promoting a positive ambience in the region. While the smaller nations of the area generally spare no effort towards improvement of the overall situation in South Asia, there is hardly any denying that the positive or negative conditions are largely contingent upon the attitude and policy of two major countries whose hostile relations fortunately took a back seat throughout the last year and augured well for 2005. The relatively and reasonably good New Delhi-Islamabad bilateral ties had cast a sobering effect in the region that also helped the regional forum SAARC to proceed with its normal activities of collective cooperation including the staging of the 13th summit at the beginning of the new year. That the event had to be called off due to serious magnitude of tsunami was a different matter altogether. The second deferment was least expected. Naturally, the issue came in for varying degrees of interpretations.

Definitely, Nepal's developments represented a grave blow to democracy and India as world's largest democracy responded on the manner in line with expectation. However, whether such developments really warranted postponement of the SAARC summit remains a big question mark. The free press in India by and large was critical of the decision of New Delhi on this issue. India later scaled down the security situation in Bangladesh as a reason for prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's inability to attend the event concentrating more on Nepal developments. Nepal situation has not improved much although sacked prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and some others have been set free from house arrest. The emergency continues with other forms of restrictions while street agitation is witnessed demanding return to democracy. Now India is ready for the SAARC summit and it appears that New Delhi is reconciling with the fact that internal affairs of Nepal should not stand in the way of holding the summit howsoever anti-democratic are the developments in that country.

True, the dust raised by these developments are yet to fully settle down, but indications are clear that all countries of the region are willing to put the recent unhappy experience behind and new dates are being explored for the SAARC summit. This reflects their commitment towards the SAARC even in the midst of differences otherwise. The cynics of the SAARC should nurture not too negative illusion since the regional forum's march is irreversible no matter whatever the progress made by the forum in last two decades. There is hardly any alternative to SAARC and the achievements are not meaningless given the resource constraint and political problems in the South Asia. After all, SAARC cannot roll back and summits are destined to take place and the next one cannot be too far off. However, a convenient time for all the seven countries is not very easy to find since they have domestic and international commitments. Exchange of ideas are continuing.

The next summit is expected to take a number of important decision crucial to the socio-economic cooperative efforts including the SAFTA. Bangladesh trade bodies have called for early convening of the postponed SAARC summit for greater interactions in trade and business. One can feel an echo of the same in other nations of south Asian region. It is important that a new timetable for the SAARC summit is fixed on priority basis where the heads of government are expected to adjust their itinerary unless it becomes totally unavoidable. There should be not much difficulty in fixing that since a unanimity is seemingly there on the holding of the much-cherished event. Long delay may dampen the enthusiasm, which is least desirable.

Zaglul Ahmed Chowdhury is a senior journalist.