Saarc does not chime as summits do not strike the right time

Is there a curse over South Asian summits? It was the rare and powerful tsunami at the end of last year that led to the first postponement of the summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) slated to be held in Dhaka in early January.

Now it was India's turn to back out from the summit that was rescheduled for the last weekend. Explaining its decision that drew flak from the region, India cited the deteriorating security conditions in Bangladesh and the changed political situation in Nepal following the royal coup d'etat by King Gyanendra.

Apportioning the blame, rightly or wrongly, in such circumstances is inevitable. What is more important, however, is to recognise the structural problems of Saarc that have surfaced one more time.

There can be no denying the fact that the leaders of the seven South Asian nations have found it difficult to meet at least once a year. Summits have been postponed at the last minute too often.

To correct this trend, a decision was taken a couple of years ago that the first week of January every year must be kept apart for Saarc deliberations at the highest level. That decision, however, could not be sustained this year.

On substance, the record of Saarc is even more depressing. Despite its existence for nearly two decades, progress on regional cooperation has been excruciatingly slow. Saarc has been the slowest of the regional boats in the world.

At the last summit in Islamabad in January 2004, South Asian nations seemed to take the first step towards regional integration when they signed a framework on South Asian Free Trade Agreement (Safta).

While optimists saw it as a huge breakthrough, sceptics were convinced that there was less than that meets the eye. In agreeing to implement Safta by 2016, the South Asian leaders had avoided many difficult decisions that underlie any free trade arrangement.

These included questions on rules of origin, dispute settlement, and compensation for least developed countries. In practical terms, the Safta was like announcing a marriage but deferring consummation.

While Saarc was going nowhere on economic cooperation, its annual summits meanwhile got overloaded with bilateral diplomatic agenda. Although the charter of Saarc does not permit the raising of bilateral issues, the annual summits seemed to provide valuable opportunities for leaders to engage in bilateral consultations on the margins.

The meeting between the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf last January in Islamabad on the sidelines of the Saarc summit produced the long-awaited breakthrough in Indo-Pak negotiations.

Without the summit, it would have been rather difficult to organise Vajpayee's visit to Pakistan and the talks.

Engineer a new life

At the Dhaka summit this year, Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was hoping to engage the Indian Premier Manmohan Singh and engineer a new life into the Indo-Pak peace process. Islamabad was looking forward to this meeting and was deeply disappointed by the Indian decision to seek a postponement.

Similarly many saw the visit of Manmohan Singh to Dhaka as an opportunity to mend ties with Bangladesh. Despite an expansive bilateral relationship there has been no prime ministerial visit in either direction between the two capitals for some years.

That the leaders of the neighbouring countries have to visit each other for once in a blue moon multilateral conferences shows the tragic state of bilateral relations in much of the subcontinent. To make matters worse, the Saarc summits have also been caught up in domestic political quarrels.

The pervasive instability in South Asia has meant that ruling parties have often sought to use the Saarc forum as an instrument of political legitimisation.

The decision by King Gyanendra to take all power just on the eve of the Saarc summit was surely a calculated one. He must have believed that the summit and the interaction with the other leaders from the neighbourhood would give him a badly needed cover against regional condemnation.

And precisely for that reason, India, which was critical of the King's decision to assume all powers in violation of Nepal's constitution, was not prepared to oblige Gyanendra.

The situation in Bangladesh has been no less difficult. Relations between the ruling and opposition parties in Bangladesh are contentious and adversarial even at the best of times.

But they have taken an ugly turn following the cold blooded killing of an opposition leader and former finance minister Shah Kibria at the end of January.

This killing follows the near successful assassination attempt a few months ago on Shaikh Hasina who is the leader of opposition and a former prime minister. The government has so far been unable to find the culprits nor has it generated any public confidence about its investigation.

Amidst growing insecurity in the nation, the opposition has resorted to street protest just days before Saarc. For many in the opposition the holding of the summit would have implied a regional endorsement of the policies of the government.

No wonder then that the government blamed the opposition for creating conditions inimical to holding the Saarc summit.

In European Union (EU) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) which are often cited as models of regional cooperation had two basic factors going for them internal stability in most countries and a shared set of security interests.So long as these trends remain elusive, regional cooperation in South Asia will remain a distant dream.

One way of moving forward might be to downplay the significance of annual summitry. In the Asean, a quarter of a century separated the founding and second summits.

What the subcontinent needs at the moment is to facilitate greater engagement at the functional level of officials and ministers to ensure that there is steady progress on economic and political cooperation.

Without such movement, high profile annual summits might end up as a diplomatic burden rather than a motor for progress. The Saarc must consider holding summits only when there are substantive agreements to be signed by the political leadership at the highest level.

Meanwhile, as the largest country in the region, India must begin to consider a more effective strategy to promote regional integration in South Asia.

C. Raja Mohan is Professor of South Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a columnist on world affairs.