- Adviser Rahman says amended charter to ‘benefit’ all ‘peace loving’ members
Bangladesh prime minister’s Adviser on International Crimes Waliur Rahman has strongly advocated ‘amendment’ to the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Charter to ‘disallow countries’ from vetoing regional initiatives.
Addressing an international conference at the Delhi University, he said the decision-making norm in the charter should be changed from unanimity to majority. “As member nations, we have not made the kind of progress, we would have wanted to. The ‘tragedy’ of SAARC, as I would like to call it, is that ‘one member’ is ‘destroying’ it,” he said.
“So, should we leave SAARC or should we disband it,” the Press Trust of India news agency quoted the adviser as saying. The SAARC Charter says the decision has to be unanimous. “I think we made a ‘mistake’ as it should be based on the UN charter. So we should amend it, to change the unanimity clause to ‘majority’ decision-making,” he said.
The Bangladeshi official said that the amended charter would ‘benefit’ all ‘peace loving’ members of the South Asian group. “Pakistan will veto our collective decision, it is a no-go situation. So, first three-four countries will have to be together. And, the proposal must be put up in the next head of the state, summit-level meet. It has to be done not in Islamabad of course, but somewhere else,” he said.
“We cannot allow SAARC to die,” he said. “Nepal shares the idea, I spoke to them. The group of willing members has to be together and make this proposal. And, it is my hunch that if rest of the SAARC countries, including Afghanistan, come together on this, Pakistan will also agree,” he said. SAARC member states include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
On sidelines of the South Asian Speakers summit, Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) president Saber Hossain Chowdhury said that the SAARC was an ‘unkept promise’ that has ‘failed’ to live up to people’s expectations. “I’m not saying that we (IPU) are a replacement for the SAARC but… I think this is what people would like to see,” he told the Indian news agency.
The SAARC could have played a better role than certain groups like the European Union as it could have come up with a SAARC Central Bank or common currency apart from a platform to discuss issues like unemployment and health, he said. Saber Hossain, who is a Bangladeshi lawmaker, said that the SAARC was entirely political and it was at the governmental level, whereas the IPU was the platform led by people who are elected by the people.
“So I think there is a difference. When you are talking on people-to-people basis, you are more frank. You can easily talk about your differences,” he said. To a question on border issues between the South Asian countries, he said that all such matters could be discussed mutually through ‘integration’ of the borders. “Borders should not be check points, they should be crossing points, and we can think of a region where there is a free flow of capital and labour,” he added.
He said that even when governments stop talking lawmakers should continue the dialogue process. “At the parliamentary-level, IPU stands for dialogue. You may have differences but talk about your differences,” he added. During a two-day conference in Kolkata, former Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman suggested that the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) grouping can make regional cooperation a success, something that SAARC ‘failed’ to achieve.
In Lahore, Indian politician and head of Mumbai-based Observer Research Foundation Sudheendra Kulkarni expressed concerns over the negative approach currently being adopted by the Indian government regarding its campaign to eliminate Pakistan from SAARC. He also said that it would be utter shortsightedness of India to pursue such a narrow-minded agenda when Pakistan was one of the fastest growing economies currently with tremendous opportunities.
