As Thimphu celebrated the 25th anniversary of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) here today, leader after South Asian leader called for urgent action to reinvent the regional bloc so that it better responded to the needs of some of the poorest people on earth.
Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigme Thinley first warned that “Saarc is losing focus” in his opening remarks, a strain that was picked up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who pointed out that the region should challenge itself by acknowledging that the “glass of regional cooperation, regional development and regional integration is half empty.”
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapkse, whose party has just convincingly won the parliamentary elections at home (and who has brought his 23-year-old son, Nawal, the newly elected MP from Matara constituency to the Saarc summit in Thimphu) quoted the Buddha, while Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed caused a stir by publicly calling upon India and Pakistan to take their squabble somewhere else — preferably outside Saarc.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, far more diplomatic, pointed out that “certain wrong-doers and terrorists are out to undo our good intentions”. She debunked all those claiming the legitimacy of Islam to justify violence.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani proposed that Saarc should “refuse to be held hostage to history”.
Manmohan Singh, whose other major engagement besides attending the summit is a meeting with Gilani here tomorrow evening, chose the “half-glass” metaphor to assess the 25 years of Saarc.
The PM’s tone was steady, but his words bordered on impatience: “In looking back at these two and a half decades, we can claim the glass is half full and compliment ourselves, or, we can admit the glass is half empty and challenge ourselves,” he said.
Of course, he added, Saarc had opened new windows of cooperation, including the development fund, the Food Bank, South Asian Free Trade Area and the South Asian University, but the challenge was to translate “official statements into popular sentiments.”
Dissatisfied, the PM added, “declarations at summits and official-level meetings do not amount to regional cooperation or integration.” Trade within South Asia was far below its own potential and did not in any way compare to that with the Association of South-East Asian Nations or East Asia.
Unfortunately, Manmohan Singh also did not offer any concrete solutions to the glacial pace of progress, only a glimpse into an ideal future : “Regional cooperation should enable freer movement of people, of goods, of services and of ideas.”
Unlike the Maldivian president, the PM did not blame any country for cramping Saarc’s progress, but added his voice to the unhappiness. “We are able to cooperate individually as members in various international fora. But it is unfortunate that together the people of South Asia do not have the voice they should and could have in the global polity,” he said.
PM-Gilani meeting
The prime ministers of India and Pakistan will return to the talks table for the first time tomorrow since their last meeting ended so disastrously in Sharm-el Sheikh last July, and it seems that both sides are far more realistic today about their expectations of each other.
A joint statement was not likely after the meeting, said sources with knowledge of the encounter, who pointed out that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wanted to meet Pakistan PM Yousaf Raza Gilani so as to “get a sense” of the lie of the land in Pakistan and how far he would be willing to go to address India’s concerns, especially on the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.
“The meeting will be a step forward, especially if Pakistan is willing to take action against the Mumbai accused,” the sources said.
With Abdul Basit, the Pakistani spokesperson telling TV journalists in the evening that the Sharm-el Sheikh conversation between the two PMs was the right way forward, that terrorism should not be linked to any dialogue, it seemed that Pakistan was hoping to up the ante by circumscribing the agenda of the two PMs on the eve of their meeting.
But the Indian sources refused to be drawn into any reactions. Keenly aware that the Sharm-el Sheikh encounter had considerably damaged the Congress government, they would only say that the PM “wanted to use this wide-ranging and extended conversation” to plot India’s next course of action.
