India moves to end SAARC logjam

Friday, 10 January 2003, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: India Friday moved to end a diplomatic logjam that has led to the postponement of a regional summit by offering its South Asian neighbours a free trade arrangement (FTA) "from tomorrow" and proposing a South Asian Union on the lines of the European Union (E.U.). The dramatic announcements by External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha at a seminar on South Asian cooperation here came on the same day when a summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was scheduled to be held in Islamabad but was postponed due to India-Pakistan differences. New Delhi and Islamabad have blamed each other for the postponement of the summit. Besides India and Pakistan, the other member countries of the SAARC are Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. "India is ready to have a free trade arrangement in South Asia from tomorrow," Sinha said. He suggested that the FTA should be on the basis of a negative list of items rather than a positive list. The negative list should exclude only those items that harmed the interests of their domestic industries. He noted that under the South Asian Preferential Trade Arrangement (SAPTA), India and Pakistan had free trade in only 18 of some 7,000 tariff lines, which were all clubbed in the negative list. In the case of Bangladesh, he said, India had offered preferential tariffs for 2,678 tariff lines while Dhaka offered only about 400. "This is not good enough. We will be more than willing to do it. What is needed is political will," he said and called for "harmonisation of tariff" under FTA. "If we are to be a trading bloc, let's work together," he maintained. He also said that the South Asian countries should move forward from SAARC to a South Asian Union and added the progress of SAARC in economic cooperation since it was set up in 1985 was "extremely disappointing". "If African, Southeast Asian and Latin American countries can have such a union there is no reason why we can't move toward a South Asian Union," he contended. Sinha also used the occasion for some blunt speaking. He told the smaller countries of the region not to hold India's size and population against it and said: "There is nothing we can do about it." The minister asked them to accept facts of geography. "An element of geography, which is beyond our control," had crept into SAARC, creating "suspicions and apprehensions" without foundation, he said. "We have no other intention than just to live in peace and friendship with all countries of our region and join in the common task of improving the quality of lives of our people," he said. And in what is seen as a major concession to meet one of the demands of Pakistan that SAARC discuss bilateral political issues, Sinha said: "In course of time, the South Asian Union will not only be an economic entity but also acquire a political dimension in the same way the European Union has acquired a political and strategic dimension. "I am not suggesting an end to SAARC. I am suggesting upgradation of SAARC," he added. Former prime minister I.K. Gujral complimented Sinha for his announcement but castigated the government for its decision to impose travel curbs on Pakistanis visiting India. Gujral, an ardent advocate of good neighbourly relations with Pakistan, cautioned: "Unless we travel we can't remove doubts and suspicion. "We have become strangers to each other. We are not the diaspora. We have much more in common. We are at a stage where we are moving back by 10 years. Every Pakistani is a terrorist suspect." "Terrorists do not come with visa," he observed. "If we create this sort of atmosphere, India will suffer more than any other country. "Please get rid of this mood of suspicion. Let's not treat all citizens of neighbouring countries with suspicion. It is counter-productive. It will harm us." Rehman Sobhan of the Dhaka-based South Asia Centre for Policy Studies referred to the three-day meeting of the global Indian diaspora, which started here Thursday, and remarked that India should not forget that "there is a no less diaspora in our own neighbourhood".
Source: IANS