South Asian regional cooperation has become the watchword of the twenty-first century in this part of the world, and in recent years the Saarc nations have taken significant steps to advance such cooperation on both bilateral and multilateral fronts. As negotiations over a free trade area for the region as well as other forms of regional cooperation pick up speed, the concept of free movement of information within the region that was brought up on the first day of the conference deserves closer attention.

Free media is indispensable to the creation of a functional democracy in which the government is accountable for its actions and the rights of the general public are upheld. Similarly, if we truly wish to create a workable and cooperative community of South Asian nations, the media must be able to cross national borders to investigate and to throw light on issues of concern.

This means that information as well as media personnel must be permitted to flow across national borders Currently, media is among the most restricted of professions for foreigners within the region, and it is these restrictions that must be lifted if information is to cross national boundaries in a meaningful way and mutual understanding thus strengthened.

It is our belief that greater intra-regional media access could only be of benefit to the public by making the government more accountable, and that, similarly, if Bangladeshi journalists and publications had greater access to information outside our borders, such greater access would also be in the national interest.