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What we need today is a dose of maturity: Vajpayee

It is an uplifting experience for me to be here in this charming city of Kathmandu, the earthly abode of the lord Pashupatinath, and in a country with which India is linked by geography, kinship, tradition and culture.

Your country has recently been through gruesome tragedy and domestic turmoil; but you have emerged from them with a more resilient society and stronger roots of your democracy.

I felicitate you on your assumption of the chair of SAARC and wish you a rewarding tenure in its stewardship. We extend our fullest cooperation to you in guiding the association forward.

As Sri Lanka passes the baton, we salute the tireless efforts of its president, who led the organisation through a difficult and turbulent period of its history with a combination of firmness and tact.

Our official and ministerial delegations have been meeting over the last few days, working on our collective decision, which will give SAARC its orientation in the 21st century.

Mr Chairman,
SAARC turned 16 last month. In its formative years, it has developed the base for a strong network of economic, social, cultural, scientific and technical collaboration in the region. Our integrated programme of action defines a broad-based agenda.

The group of eminent persons has identified the elements of a social agenda, which could form the nucleus of a SAARC social charter.

Sri Lanka's initiative for a SAARC Cultural Centre underlines the common cultural heritage of our unique South Asian identity.

More and more of our professionals like doctors and accountants, writers and painters, business leaders and journalists are establishing associations with their counterparts across borders.

What we need today is the dose of maturity, which would lead SAARC from adolescence to adulthood. It would enable us to put aside our mutual rivalries, so that our scarce resources can be concentrated on the pressing agenda of eradication of poverty, hunger, disease, and illiteracy.

It would not let political obsessions cloud our collective vision of a vibrant and prosperous South Asian community.

Some months ago, I wrote to a South Asian colleague, reminding him that the common enemy of our two countries is poverty and inviting him to take with us the high road of cooperation and reconciliation to satisfy the shared aspirations of our people.

From this forum today, I make the same appeal to all the leaders of South Asia: Let us jointly declare war on the poverty, which afflicts about half a billion people in our region alone. Let us develop regional poverty alleviation programmes, which would complement our national schemes and strengthen our commitment to implement them.

Ten years ago, we set up an independent South Asian Commission for poverty alleviation with a membership of eminent South Asians. The Dhaka summit endorsed its report and committed South Asia to work for total eradication of poverty, preferably by 2002. Unfortunately, this joint endeavour never took off.

I believe that we owe it to our people to make another sincere attempt. The Poverty Commission still exists. Let it be revived and reconvened to update and flesh out its 1992 report. Let us, this time, show great commitment to making our cooperative mechanisms work.

India is willing to host the meetings of the reconvened Poverty Commission and extend all assistance to enable it to complete its work expeditiously.

Mr. Chairman,
Four countries in our region are in the least developed category, the other three are developing countries.

As the technological revolution advances and globalisation shrinks the world, the challenges that confront us require innovative responses.

We do not want our socio-economic disparities of today to be transformed into the digital divide of tomorrow. We have to take difficult decisions to reconcile the pace of our liberalisation with the needs of our nascent industries and equitable development.

It is important that we recognize the primacy of the economic agenda in SAARC. Our region is home to one fifth of humanity.

With a market of this size, our natural wealth, our human resources, our technical skills and our intellectual strengths, an integrated South Asia can be an economic power house, by using its synergies creatively and building on the mutual complementarities of its constituent economies.

We have to increase our intra-regional trade, which is limited by a variety of national barriers. In an intensely competitive world, regional economic groupings create obvious economies of scale. At times of wider recession, regional trade can cushion their adverse impact.

The progression from SAPTA to a free trade area and then to South Asian economic union has a self-evident economic logic.

Government industry partnerships also promote regional trade and I congratulate the SAARC Chamber of Commerce on this initiative.

We have extraordinary cases of trade between two adjoining countries of our region through distant third countries. Developing countries with severe balance of payments problems cannot afford the luxury of this extra burden on their national exchequer or the consumers' pockets.

While promoting intra-regional trade, we also need to address the special needs and circumstances of the least developed countries.

India can consider further concessional duty regime for products from these countries. We have already accorded this benefit to Nepal and Bhutan.

I recommend consultations among our ministers to identify specific proposals to invigorate the South Asian growth quadrangle.

I am also proposing that the commerce secretaries meet at the very earliest to address such trade facilitation issues.

Mr Chairman,
India has been a victim of international terrorism for two decades now. Other countries in our region have also been similarly affected. Terrorism uses different religious, territorial, economic and ethnic justifications in different countries. But the end product of mindless violence, civilian casualties, economic disruption and social tensions is the same everywhere.

We now have an international coalition against terrorism, which accepts that terrorism has to be countered in a global and comprehensive manner. The international community has agreed that no country would allow its soil to be used, actively or passively, to finance, shelter, arm or train terrorist groups.

The recent experience of Afghanistan also showed graphically that tolerance, acquiescence or sponsorship of terrorism creates a monster out of the control of its own creator.

It was in this city of Kathmandu 14 years ago that the SAARC countries adopted a Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism. As an international measure, that document was somewhat ahead of its times. Unfortunately, consequent action was not taken by some countries.

We in South Asia have to recognize that our cooperative future will be significantly influenced by the way in which we can tackle terrorism together. Updating and strengthening the SAARC convention would provide a contemporary framework for coop ration in this area.

It would also be a powerful confidence building measure, which would create positive ripples in virtually every area of our interaction within SAARC.

Mr Chairman,
The SAARC summit has convened today after nearly three and a half years. There is an air of optimism today that we can perhaps arrest the state of drift in our regional cooperation over these last years. Some mindsets may have to be altered, and some historical baggage jettisoned.

I am glad Pervez Musharraf extended his hand of friendship to me. I have shaken his hand in your presence. Now, President Musharraf must follow this gesture by not permitting any activity in Pakistan or any territory in its control today, which enables terrorists to perpetuate mindless violence in India.

I say this from our past experience. I went to Lahore with a hand of friendship. We were rewarded by an aggression in Kargil and the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft from Kathmandu.

I invited President Pervez Musharraf to Agra. We were rewarded with terrorist attacks on the Jammu and Kashmir assembly and last month on the Parliament in India.

But we would be betraying the expectations of our peoples if we did not chart out a course towards satisfying the unfulfilled promises of our common South Asian destiny.

Thank you.

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