SAARC Summit: High expectations, limited achievement

The SAARC leaders had also raised hopes at the inaugural session, when they had reiterated their commitment to the importance of regional cooperation and had expressed their desire to work for the implementation of their earlier decisions. Yet the Declaration, obviously drafted by lesser mortals and adopted after the end of the two-day Summit, has largely belied those hopes. Some notable progress has been made but the crucial issues have either been bypassed or merely re-delegated to Ministers for further negotiations without giving them any fresh guidelines. The much-talked about commitment to work for implementation of earlier decisions or for strengthening the SAARC Secretariat and other institutions have also remained largely unfulfilled.

The SAARC leaders decided, in principle, to admit Afghanistan as a member and to grant observer status to Asian giants China and Japan, and asked their Ministers to work out the modalities. This is surely a timely decision and it should bring new vitality to the moribund organisation. Some experts have expressed reservation about admitting Afghanistan at this stage in view of its current security situation and lack of control over its territory. I do not share their skepticism. Afghanistan has and will always be a part of South Asia and its admission was only a matter of time. At the time of launching of SAARC, they could not be included as the country was under Soviet intervention. Afghanistan is a connecting land bridge between South and Central Asia and its admission should offer new opportunities to SAARC to establish institutional contacts with the Central Asian countries and their regional body Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). Likewise, granting of observer status to China and Japan would surely bring in rich dividends.

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The issue of poverty alleviation has been considered with due importance and the Summit, at the initiative of Bangladesh, declared the years from 2006-15 as the SAARC Decade of poverty alleviation. However, a mere declaration would not alleviate poverty in the region where the world's 40 percent absolute poor live. There was a clear need for some new initiatives and concrete actions. At the least, the leaders could have pushed forward the decisions, which were taken at the Islamabad Summit a little over a year ago. In Islamabad, a provisional fund of US $300 million had been created and India had pledged US $100 million. At the Dhaka Summit some effort should have been made to obtain some fresh pledges from other members. The fund was too small to address such a gigantic issue and Bangladesh was right in asking for its considerable expansion. But unless they themselves make their own pledges and show their commitments, others will not come. The South Asians surely need generous international assistance and there is no disagreement on this issue. Yet the Finance Ministers have merely been mandated to work out the detailed modalities about the fund without being given any authority to undertake even preliminary negotiations with donor countries, World Bank or any other financial bodies.

Likewise, the issue of the launching of South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) from next January, as was decided at the Islamabad Summit, has been dwelt at length by all SAARC leaders. Yet when it came to implementing that decision by removing the roadblocks, they merely passed on the buck to their Commerce Ministers without giving them any guidelines for the resolution of outstanding issues like the negative lists, the rules of origin and the mechanism to compensate the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in South Asia, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives, for the loss they would incur due to tariff reduction. If the LDCs can get preferential treatment from the European Union, Japan, United States and other developed countries they should at least get some special concessions from their neighbours. It is only logical to create equitable ground so that LDCs can effectively compete against their relatively well-off neighbours.

In the light of the current wind of change in Indo-Pak ties much hope was pinned on a breakthrough on SAFTA and other crucial issues, but nothing substantive was actually achieved at the Dhaka Summit. On the contrary, the limits of their cooperation was starkly demonstrated when the Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, even before the Dhaka Declaration was issued, candidly announced that unless there was "progress" on the core issue of Kashmir, Pakistan would stay away from free trade with India. It is difficult to imagine how SAFTA could be operational without free trade between the two major countries in the region.

Unless the SAFTA is fully operational, it is somewhat premature to talk about economic integration under the aegis of South Asian Economic Union (SAEU). Nevertheless, the leaders expressed their optimism that it would be possible to hasten the process and launch the SAEU by 2020. To that end, three important agreements were signed in the areas of mutual administrative assistance in customs matters, establishment of SAARC Arbitration Council and limited multilateral agreement on avoidance of double taxation.

These are basic agreements for any economic integration, but the more important fourth agreement relating to promotion, protection and guarantee of investments, which was scheduled to be signed in Dhaka, fell through at the last minute due to lack of consensus among the members. South Asia, due to lack of necessary legal infrastructure and chronic instability, has so far received only one percent of global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI.). Conclusion of such an agreement would have partly allayed fears of regional and international investors; yet, this opportunity was missed.

The SAARC leaders also expressed their desire to collectively fight terrorism and expressed satisfaction at the ratification of the additional protocol to the SAARC convention on suppression of terrorism by all member states. They underscored the need for an early conclusion of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, and emphasised the need for exchange of information, and coordination and cooperation among the relevant national agencies. It was also decided that Home/Interior Ministers would meet annually and that it would be preceded by a meeting of Home Secretaries. Here again, the sensitive issues, like extradition of terrorists among member countries, were not addressed nor the Ministers were given any definitive guidelines on other sensitive issues.

The South Asian region was badly affected by tsunami, floods and earthquakes during recent months and naturally, the leaders emphasised the need to set up a permanent regional response mechanism devoted to disaster preparedness, emergency relief and rehabilitation. Likewise, they underscored the importance of cooperation in energy, road transportation and transit, and regional food bank.

The social challenges before the South Asian countries are simply mind-boggling. The region, in the global context, lags behind other regions of the world, both in income and in human development. Despite recent high GDP growth, the living condition and basic facilities for the vast majority have been very poor. Largest number of illiterates lives in the region, and the basic health care facilities are still lacking for the vast majority. The South Asian countries have always occupied the bottom positions in all UNDP Human Development reports. The Social Charter, signed in Islamabad, had identified specific goals for members to achieve, and the Dhaka Summit asked all National Coordination Committees to complement the national level programmes with regional efforts.

Who will implement the SAARC decisions? As per the Charter, the national-level bodies have been entrusted with these tasks and the SAARC Secretariat has been given very basic coordinating role. A decision had been taken at the Islamabad Summit to strengthen the SAARC Secretariat and other institutional mechanism. High SAARC Secretariat officials pointed out to me that despite such clear-cut directives and the best of their efforts, it has not been possible to convene a single meeting during the past fourteen months as officials of member countries have shown no interest in attending any such meeting.

Many experts also believe that since the SAARC Secretariat does not have any permanent staff, it lacks continuity. Currently member countries send their officials to Secretariat on deputation for a fixed term. The SAARC Ambassadors based in Katmandu do meet informally at the SAARC Secretariat but they do not have any mandate to take any decision on SAARC matters. Experts believe that they should be given some official status to pursue ongoing negotiations on issues of mutual interest.

The Dhaka Summit has taken some important decisions and given new visions to the SAARC but unfortunately no concrete action was taken to hasten the process of integration. As other regional organisations have demonstrated, SAARC will only succeed when all its members forsake their narrow national interest for the larger benefit of the region. India as the largest member has to assume its primary responsibility in steering the process forward. There is no substitute for regional cooperation in this era of globalisation and yet the pace has been so slow in South Asia. The SAARC leaders at the Dhaka Summit had raised hopes of the people of the region through their renewed commitments and resolves, and had also given new vision to SAARC. The sooner they can reduce the gap between their words and deeds the better they shall do. Otherwise, SAARC will remain a lame duck entity, while other regions will continue to move far ahead of our region.

Syed Muazzem Ali is a former Foreign Secretary.