New Delhi, Nov. 8: New Delhi will push for reviewing Saarc guidelines on admitting countries and other multilateral groupings as observers at the association’s two-day summit from Thursday.
India is apprehensive that some of the observer countries may make Saarc a platform to increase their footprint in the region. A three-year moratorium to admit new countries as observer ends this year. Saarc now has nine observers — Australia, China, the European Union, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Mauritius, Myanmar and the US.
Pakistan and Nepal are keen to bring China on board. In a statement issued today, Islamabad said it “welcomed China ’s interest in an interactive partnership with Saarc”. It also supported Turkey’s request.
But India wants the guidelines revamped. It believes nine observers for an eight-member grouping are too much.
Foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai explained India’s stance. “We are interested in economic integration with the rest of Asia . That is a goal driven more bilaterally and our engagement with individual countries. The only group engagement would be our engagement with Asean.” He dismissed a speculation that Saarc as a whole may try to integrate with another grouping.
The official theme of the November 10-11 summit, the 17th such meeting, is “building bridges”. The focus is on increasing connectivity in the region and improving people-to-people contacts.
For Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the summit will also offer an opportunity for bilateral meetings with his Pakistani and Bangladeshi counterparts.
Sources said Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina could broach the subject of early signing of the Teesta and Feni water-sharing agreements. A pointer to this had come yesterday from Bangladesh high commissioner to India, Tariq A. Karim, who said in New Delhi that the treaties should not become hostage to “local politics”.
“A solution can be arrived at if one were to look at the larger picture and rise above being hostage to the politics of the purely local,” Karim said during a lecture.
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had complained that the Centre did not consult her on the proposed Teesta deal. She had pulled out of the Prime Minister’s Dhaka trip in September in protest.
