SAARC: Focus on Modi
South Asian leaders meet next week at Katmandu in Nepal. The South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) summit has crept up stealthily without much ado.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa goes with an IOU to his credit for doing the Indian Prime Minister a favour by pardoning five Indian fishermen who had been sentenced to death by a Colombo court for drug trafficking (and to hell with the due legal process). He was due to tell the Indian media that he did what he did in recognition of the new direction the foreign policy of India was taking under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
SAARC has always been -- next year the regional group will be 30 years old -- more about bilateral relations rather than regionalism despite the fact that the SAARC Charter prohibits the discussion of bi-lateral issues that the framers thought would lead to the disintegration of the group. It is public knowledge, however, that it is these contentious issues that have bogged down the South Asian nations from forming a formidable economic bloc.
This is also the Indian PM's first SAARC summit. By inviting SAARC leaders for his inauguration earlier this year, he showed he was committed to SAARC. Yet, he has also shown his commitment to BRICS, an emerging economic bloc with its own bank etc., and ventured to strengthening relations with the US and normalising relations with China. Independent of SAARC, all memberstates are wooing China's money into their investment projects.
Crucial agreements are on the cards in the Nepali capital next week: The free movement of commercial vehicles between borders (not so relevant to Sri Lanka maybe) and a SAARC Framework Agreement for Energy Cooperation to form a kind of regional power grid to be sold to SAARC nations.
The Sampur coal power project (relevant to Sri Lanka) will see power sold to India while Sri Lanka takes the environmental fallout. India's growing number of nuclear facilities in its southern sector is certainly an issue for Sri Lanka. There is new danger in the South Asian region arising from the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new UN study says. (Please see our INSIGHT report on Page 10.) This month, Pakistan test fired an intermediate range Shaheen 1A (Hatf IV) ballistic missile, capable of carrying nuclear and conventional warheads. Sri Lanka must bring into focus the need to rein in the South Asian nuclear powers in their quest to acquire ever-increasing nuclear capability.
But overall the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan is going to dominate SAARC and restrict its expansion to a greater entity. People-to-people contacts have been made tighter than ever before between SAARC countries. India's handling of the poaching issue in Sri Lankan waters is a textbook case of Indian self-interest superseding regional cooperation. As primus-inter-pares of the SAARC, India's leadership under the Modi dispensation will be closely watched. No. 08, Hunupitiya Cross Road, Colombo 02. P.O. Box 1136, Colombo
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