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Indo-Pak differences cast a long shadow over SAARC summit

For the first time since its inception, the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation faces a ticklish situation on the question of disarmament following the nuclearisation of the region, analysts said today.

Since the last summit in Male, both India and Pakistan have carried out serial atomic tests, and the Colombo Declaration, to be issued at the end of the summit, would have to take this new situation in the region into consideration, they said.

The Male Declaration had stated: ''Noting that the end of the Cold War had created unprecedented opportunities in the field of disarmament, the heads of state or government recognised the need for the international community to pursue nuclear disarmament as a matter of highest priority.

''In this regard, they recognised the need to start negotiations through the Conference on Disarmament and to establish a phased programme for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons within a specified framework of time, including a nuclear weapons convention''.

In fact, successive SAARC summits have supported the lofty ideal of nuclear disarmament.

''The appeal has to be now directed at itself, but there is little likelihood of that as India and Pakistan are the big brothers of SAARC,'' a diplomat from a smaller member country said.

Analysts said the Indo-Pakistan rivalry, aggravated by the recent nuclear tests, would make not only disarmament but most other objectives set by the seven-nation grouping for itself mere ideals.

''We are sick and tired of the India and Pakistan squabble. Now there is no SAARC spirit there was at the beginning,'' said the diplomat. ''Now we have to wait for these two to settle their problem if we want anything done in SAARC,'' he added.

The analysts said trade was one issue which could really help improve the living conditions of the 1.1 billion people in the region, the poorest in the world, but nothing could move forward unless India and Pakistan resolved their political problems.

They said rhetoric had overtaken these realities when the Male summit set 2001 as the target year for implementing the South Asian Free Trade Agreement.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan claimed in Male that resolution of the Kashmir dispute could turn South Asia into the fastest growing region in the world.

Then Indian foreign secretary Salman Haider went a step further when he spoke of South Asian integration, economic union and a single currency.

But even before the Indo-Pakistan nuclear tests, an eminent persons group set up by the SAARC secretariat, said in its report that SAFTA, originally scheduled to come into effect between the year 2000 and 2005, would be possible only by 2008 or 2010.

''The way things are going (between India and Pakistan), by the time SAFTA comes into effect, we would be all buried in our own declarations,'' said the diplomat.

UNI

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