South Asian leaders on Wednesday admitted a collective failure to develop their conflict-ridden region and to forge a united front against the threats of 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.
PHOTO: AFP
“We are losing focus,” he added, citing squabbles and tensions between the bloc’s member states that had prevented implementation of its numerous, but ultimately toothless, commitments to change.
“Fractious and quarrelsome neighbors do not make a prosperous community,” he said.
SAARC, founded in 1985, groups Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Critics have blamed its failure to exploit the region’s common potential on 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 neighbors 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 meeting between the two leaders was 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.
“Declarations at summits and official level meetings do not amount to regional cooperation or integration,” he added.
The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is hosting the summit for the first time and has put the focus on climate change, which is of special concern to SAARC members like Bangladesh and The Maldives, both threatened by rising sea levels.
“The capacity of the planet to sustain life is fast diminishing ... [and] it is the poor who suffer most,” Thinley said. “We need to act in concert.”
Pakistan’s prime minister echoed the need for some “dispassionate reflection” on SAARC’s record to date.
“For many years, real progress remained stalled, due in part to hesitancy born from historical legacies, differences and disputes,” Gilani said.
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