NEW DELHI, 1 April 2007 — Officials of seven South Asian nations yesterday cleared the way for Iran’s admission as an observer to their regional grouping, known as the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation, an Indian official said.
The proposal now awaits approval of the SAARC foreign ministers and the summit of top leaders due to be held in the Indian capital next week, India’s Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters.
Iran, which applied for the observer status, would be able to attend SAARC meetings from next year without voting rights.
The forum is expected to provide Iran an opportunity to forge closer economic ties with the groups members: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives. The group was set up in 1985 to promote economic cooperation, but progress has been slow because of rivalry between India and Pakistan. The South Asian region is home to a fifth of the world’s population and has some of the world’s poorest people.
The group already has admitted China, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the European Union as observers. They will be attending the opening and closing sessions of the New Delhi summit on April 3-4 and other meetings in agreed areas of cooperation. Afghanistan is to join the regional grouping next week as its 8th member.
Expressing confidence that the forthcoming summit would provide a “decisive opportunity” to advance regional integration, European Union Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner sent a special message from Brussels.
“Our own experience shows the importance of this (intra-region trade and cooperation) for sustained development and regional integration and this is, indeed, one among a number of areas where we are happy to cooperate with the efforts that SAARC is making,” Waldner said.
The 25-nation EU “stands ready to continue to share expertise and experience in all areas of interest to SAARC as well as in the implementation of the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA),” Waldner said. EU would be participating in the SAARC Summit for the first time as an observer along with United States, China, Japan and South Korea.
New Delhi has repeatedly called for improvements in trade, travel and telecommunications links among members of SAARC, long held hostage by hostility between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan. “Economic connectivity... for us is very important,” Menon said.
Menon said the summit will focus on travel, telecommunications and energy links in the region, which is home to nearly 1.4 billion people. Hosting the 14th SAARC summit, India would take over its chairmanship from Bangladesh.
