Expectations From 15th SAARC Summit

The Fifteenth Summit Meeting of Heads of State or Government of SAARC (Colombo, 2-3 August 2008) has attracted a lot of attention in the Nepalese press. The coverage especially in the last few days when Nepal was preparing to send a summit level delegation has been quite extensive. Though the people here were somewhat puzzled to see a kind of confusion on the matter after the government's decision to dispatch a 30 plus member delegation to the Colombo summit, the news that all major four political parties forged consensus at the last moment came as a big relief.

Good Omen

The parley of the political parties was rightly utilized by the caretaker Prime Minister in persuading all leaders that there should be no obstruction to his leadership in the SAARC summit. This should have been considered a good omen on the eve of a summit being hosted by Sri Lanka, a SAARC fellow member and a good friend of Nepal, which is observing 60th anniversary of its independence.

Ideally, the representative of a new government should have led the 15th SAARC Summit Delegation. Despite all the initiatives taken by the CPN (M) in the capacity of being the single largest political party in the Constituent Assembly in mobilizing support from all other fellow parties in CA to form a new cabinet, the time was running out. The options before Nepal were not many. Either it had to decide the newly-elected President to be the leader of SAARC Delegation or to let the Prime Ministerial Delegation, though a jumbo size as some critics point out, to participate in the regional meeting. There were differing opinions regarding Presidential delegation as the current Interim Constitution of Nepal makes provision for a ceremonial President. The SAARC Charter provisions suggest that Summit meetings of regional organization are to be represented at the level of Heads of State or Government with executive powers. One can always argue that there have been exceptions to this arrangement.

The most glaring example of a situation when the ceremonial President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan led the country's delegation to Eighth SAARC Summit was (May 2-4, 1995) in New Delhi. That time late Mrs. Benazir Bhutto was the Prime Minister of Pakistan who did not attend that summit for some internal reasons. Had the political parties agreed on the suggested formula of sending Nepal's President to lead the 15th SAARC Summit in view of caretaker nature of the present government, there would hardly have been objections to Nepal's participation from other participating summiteers. In that situation, the Constituent Assembly could have taken a decision authorizing our ceremonial President to attend the meeting as the head of the Nepalese Delegation which would not be setting any precedent for the future. Anyway the issue was resolved without having to take recourse to a proposal to be tabled before the CA in this regard. The way it had been addressed only indicates that the political parties are capable of developing consensus though at the very last moment.

As the SAARC meetings move on in Colombo we have been receiving encouraging results. SAARC Standing Committee has already recommended the Draft Colombo Declaration to be adopted at the end of the 15th summit. The world is facing acute shortage of food supply with resultant high price creating additional economic burden on SAARC countries where about 40 per cent of poor people in the world live. In consideration of this, the presentation of a Statement on Food Security by the Foreign Secretaries for approval by the Foreign Ministers to be issued during summit looked quite relevant. Food crisis is one of the pressing issues before the 15th SAARC. There has been notable progress achieved under the framework of regional organization. One of these is the finalization of the Draft SAARC Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance related to criminal matters. This will enhance regional cooperation in combating terrorism which seems to raise its ugly head as demonstrated in recent bomb blasts in different cities in India causing both human and material damages. Of the many expected outcome, the operationalization of SAARC Development Fund following the signature of Agreement connected to the same during the summit is the most noteworthy one. This fund seems to be a successor to South Asia Development that was conceived a few years earlier. The present fund is much more promising with a lot of ownership taken by the member countries themselves. SAARC Development Fund is equivalent to $300 million which has three different windows like social, economic and infrastructure. Among the three windows, some projects concerning health and education of the South Asian people will be launched in the near future. The fund amount is to be raised from among the member governments of SAARC countries based on the assessment scale applied in meeting the expenses of SAARC secretariat. It is roughly estimated that the government of Nepal will have to contribute $32 million to the SAARC Development Fund. Perhaps, this was the reason why apprehension was expressed by the leaders of some major political parties with regard to the Delegation of caretaker Prime Minister to the 15th SAARC Summit where Agreement on the subject is being signed. Many people in the SAARC region feel that the regional organization has lacked in its implementation. SAARC has completed two decades of its existence and there are not many concrete projects launched in South Asia to deliver economic fruits. There is enough truth behind criticism of SAARC. Till today we do not have any statistics to show growing intra-trade in our region. Accelerated economic growth is not possible without having more freely-traded goods among the member countries. In theory, the SAARC leaders have realized this as seen through their commitments to move forward on economic matters. Slow Pace In this connection, we need to mention that SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Association) has come into effect for some years but regional trade has taken very slow pace. The reasons for this are understandable. The SAARC member nations have not been so forthcoming in being flexible in their approach to liberalize intra-SAARC trade. They are still maintaining a very long list of goods which cannot be traded freely. Negative list with many items included is an impediment to trade among nations. Additionally, member countries still impose non-tariff barriers. Once the countries come out of this obsession with their long negative list of goods, it may pave way forward for increased trade to uplift the common well-being of South Asians for which the regional organization was born about 22 years ago.
Source: The Rising Nepal (By Hira Bahadur Thapa)