SAARC summit likely in Dec.

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, AUG. 9. The Foreign Secretaries of SAARC countries today began a special two-day meeting that will discuss dates for the Kathmandu summit and a host of economic and social issues on the agenda of the grouping that have been awaiting decisions since 1999, the last time it met at a high level.

Inaugurating the meeting of the collective, called the SAARC Standing Committee, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, appealed to the Foreign Secretaries to come up with firm recommendations and time-tables to help speed up the work of the regional grouping, regardless of political developments in the region.

``The work of SAARC should not be held back. In fact, much of it depends on the decisions and the recommendations that may be made by the Foreign Secretaries at their regular meetings,'' he said.

This is the first meeting of the standing committee since the one in 1998 preceding the Colombo summit, and the first SAARC charter body meeting since the Council of Foreign Ministers gathered in Nuwara Eliya in 1999.

The Kathmandu summit that was scheduled for November that year was put off after India vetoed the idea of a heads of Government meeting following the military coup in Pakistan in which Gen. Pervez Musharraf took power.

Mr. Kadirgamar said the summit - the 11th since the founding of SAARC - was now likely to be held in the last week of December. The standing committee is to discuss the dates for the summit. Host Nepal will propose that the meeting be held on December 28, 29 and 30.

The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, also the chairman of the SAARC Council of Ministers, said it was fair criticism that the work of the grouping had slowed down in the three years since the last summit was held.

As there had been no high-level meeting in this time, there had been a ``reluctance'' to take decisions on new measures and initiatives.

``But that apart, there has been a slackening of interest in implementing directives which flowed from the last summit, perhaps because the need for a reinvigorated summit mandate is felt after a lapse of three years,'' Mr. Kadirgamar said.

The 10th summit that was held in Colombo had called for a framework treaty on a free trade agreement for the region (SAFTA) to be ready by the end of 2001 and for a social charter on poverty alleviation, women's empowerment, population control, human resources development and the protection of children.

Mr. Kadirgamar asked the Foreign Secretaries to address themselves to the slow pace of progress on both, and on the preferential trade agreement (SAPTA), the fourth round of discussions for which has so far proved elusive.

An important item on the agenda of the standing committee will be to work out a common SAARC position for the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting at Doha in Qatar this November.

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Section  : International
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