SAARC dumps early summit amid Indo-Pak tensions<\/p>\n
COLOMBO (AFP): Bilateral bickering between India and Pakistan
\nis holding up a summit of a seven-nation regional grouping which
\nis already a year overdue, Sri Lanka's foreign minister said on
\nMonday.<\/p>\n
The summit of the South Asian Association for Regional
\nCooperation (SAARC) was due to be held in Nepal in November 1999,
\nbut an escalation of clashes along the India-Pakistan border
\nprevented the summit from going ahead.<\/p>\n
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar said that
\nthere were still no prospects of an early meeting given the
\ncontinuing tensions between the South Asian neighbors.<\/p>\n
\"A sense of skepticism or cynicism about the future of SAARC
\nmust not be permitted to spread,\" Kadirgamar said. \"Given the
\npresent circumstances ... no meetings of the summit process are
\nimmediately envisaged.\"<\/p>\n
However Kadirgamar, who opened an extra ordinary official-
\nlevel SAARC meeting here on Monday, said the fledgling regional
\nmovement would overcome the \"problems that bedevil relations
\namong some of us.\"<\/p>\n
\"They are intractable, but not insoluble,\" Kadirgamar said.
\n\"There is a vast reservoir of goodwill among all the parties of
\nour region which in time will propel the member states concerned
\nto get together, to bury their differences, and move SAARC
\nalong.\"<\/p>\n
SAARC secretary general, Nihal Rodrigo, said their official-
\nlevel meeting was no substitute for a summit and cautioned that
\nthey should forge closer regional ties in the face of challenges
\nposed by globalization.<\/p>\n
\"The meeting being inaugurated is meant to promote a
\ncollective encounter of the functional kind, it is not meant to
\ndelve deep into a review of its past performance nor to make
\nphilosophical projections into the future,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Rodrigo said there was a lack of cooperation among member
\nstates and attributed it to a \"want of closer encounters of a
\npractical kind.\"<\/p>\n
India has also been reluctant to attend a summit with
\nPakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, who seized
\npower in October 1999.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka's foreign minister urged the officials to make a
\nstrong recommendation on time frames for a South Asian Free Trade
\nArea (SAFTA). SAARC had earlier set a 2001 deadline for a
\nframework treaty on free trade.<\/p>\n
However, Asian diplomats attending the three-day meeting here
\nsaid it was a formidable challenge to meet that deadline given
\nthe internal problems.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka which currently holds SAARC'S rotating chairmanship
\nremained optimistic for the future of the organization which was
\nformed in 1985, but has little to show by way of results.<\/p>\n
\"Whatever the political climate may be at a given point of
\ntime, a sense of South Asia is clearly evident among our peoples,
\nand is bound to grow,\" Kadirgamar said.<\/p>",
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