South Asian leaders admit failing their region
South Asian leaders admitted yesterday a common failure to overcome their differences and tackle the key challenges in their conflict-ridden region, including poverty, climate change and terrorism.
Opening a summit of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) in Bhutan, the host nation's Prime Minister Jigme Thinley said it was time for the bloc to take a long, critical look at itself.
In the 25 years since it was formed to encourage development and raise the living standards of a region that is home to one-fifth of humanity, "Saarc's journey has not been one of outstanding success", Thinley said.
"We are losing focus," he added, citing squabbles and tension between the bloc's member states that had prevented implementation of its numerous, but ultimately toothless, commitments to change.
"Fractious and quarrelsome neighbours do not make a prosperous community," he said.
Many Saarc critics have blamed its failure to exploit the region's common potential to the long and bitter rivalry between its two most powerful members, India and Pakistan, which has often hijacked the bloc's agenda.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since the subcontinent's 1947 partition and remain at loggerheads over the region of Kashmir.
They are also locked in a struggle for influence in Afghanistan, which joined Saarc in 2007.
The Indian and Pakistani prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani both attended the summit, which comes at a time when their countries are, once again, barely on speaking terms.
A bilateral meeting between the two leaders has been scheduled for Thursday.
Addressing the regional gathering, Singh acknowledged that Saarc had fallen short of its founding aspirations.
"In looking back at these two-and-a-half decades we can claim the glass is half full, and compliment ourselves, or we can admit the glass is half empty and challenge ourselves," he said.
Comments