Pakistan has taken the responsibility of the secretary-general post of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) for the second time on Wednesday.
Amjad Hussain Sial replaced Arjun Bahadur Thapa of Nepal as the new secretary general of the forum. This is the 13th time that Pakistan took the responsibility of the post. In 1996, Naeem U Hasan from Pakistan had served as the sixth secretary-general of the forum.
Amjad Sial, a special secretary at the Foreign Service of Pakistan, assumed the post on March 1 as per the tradition of the regional forum of eight South Asian countries. Tensions between Pakistan and India, which resulted in the cancellation of the SAARC Summit in Islamabad last year, had cast a cloud over Sial’s appointment.
India had said the appointment should be endorsed by the SAARC Council of Ministers, and not through a diplomatic note. Nepalese officials said that Pakistan and India had apparently patched up their differences over the appointment. According to the SAARC process, the rejection of a candidate by even one member state means the appointment cannot go ahead.
Sial has experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy in Islamabad and Pakistani missions abroad. He served as director (Pakistan) at the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu during 2003-06 and special secretary in the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad. Sial will now have the challenge of getting the member states to agree to go ahead with the stalled summit.