Peace in Asia could be restored by excluding western powers from process: Raza Rabbani

Chairman Senate Mian Raza Rabbani said that the road map for peace in Asia can only be made by finding indigenous solutions and by excluding super powers from “peacemaking” efforts as these very same super powers need war to keep their military industrial complexes running efficiently.

While addressing the inaugural session of the 9th Plenary of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly being held in Siem Reap, Cambodia on Monday, Raza Rabbani asked the Asian nations whether they can consider to agreeing on reducing the defence budget every year by a certain percentage and divert the savings towards specific national funds created for poverty alleviation and developing a common technology pool and free transfer of technology among themselves.  He stressed that the region should prove itself equal to the task instead of adopting a policy of might is right.

In a message received from Siem Reap, Cambodia, the Chairman Senate said that regional conflicts in post-colonial Asia and other colonised continents have emerged from disputed boundaries that colonial powers left undecided while leaving those countries.

“Peace can only be brought about by nations that desperately need peace”, he maintained, adding that regional conflicts have led to higher defence budgets. He said that higher defence budgets have led to higher budgetary deficits and the destruction of economies.

He said that donor driven economies are designed to create poverty and to increase income gaps. Their formula for economic growth starts and ends with the retrenchment of workers and closure of industrial units.   He said that economic growth is not possible without increasing purchasing power (wages) of the poor, increasing national production and decreasing income gaps. “Nations have to focus on equality, maximum employment, higher production, poverty reduction and poverty eradication,” he added.

Raza Rabbani said that former colonial masters have been the main suppliers of weapons to the conflicting nations. “Can the nations of Asia, as a starting point, agree on a multinational ‘No War Treaty’, thus creating the right atmosphere for conflict resolution through dialogue’? Rabbani questioned.

He emphasised that western policies of supporting extremist groups to overthrow progressive regimes have to be openly condemned and resisted in Asia.

He underscored the need for making collective efforts to combat the scourge of terrorism saying that it is only through collective action and sharing of intelligence on the identification and activities of extremist and terrorist groups that these menaces can be finally eliminated.

Senator Rabbani called for reviving the same passion and zeal that saw the Asian and African nations unite at the platform of the first Afro-Asian Conference, held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955.