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Pakistan boycotts India-led meeting of SAARC trade officials on coronavirus crisis

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Press Trust of India Islamabad
Last Updated : Apr 09 2020 | 12:26 AM IST

Pakistan on Wednesday boycotted a video conference of trade officials from the SAARC countries, saying such meetings could only be effective if spearheaded by the group's secretariat instead of India.

The conference was convened to discuss the impact of coronavirus in the region and how the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) forum could come up with a common strategy.

In the virtual conference, the trade officials broadly agreed to identify new ways to "sustain and expand" the intra-regional trade to offset the huge economic cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

The deliberations took place as a follow up to an India-initiated video conference of SAARC leaders on March 15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested in the conference that the member nations of the bloc should come together to jointly fight the pandemic.

Shortly after the conference, Pakistan's Foreign Office in a statement said, "Activities such as today's Trade Officials' Video-Conference could only be effective if spearheaded by the SAARC Secretariat. Since the SAARC Secretariat was not part of today's Video-Conference, Pakistan chose not to participate."
Earlier, India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in a statement said, "In order for the countries to deal with the situation, it was stressed that new ways and means be jointly identified to sustain and expand the intra-regional trade until the normal trade channels are fully restored."

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First Published: Apr 09 2020 | 12:26 AM IST

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