Council vows to convert ‘words to deeds’

The Council of SAARC Foreign Ministers today cleared a host of proposals, particularly in areas of poverty alleviation and economic cooperat...

The Council of SAARC Foreign Ministers today cleared a host of proposals, particularly in areas of poverty alleviation and economic cooperation. The Council, which concluded its two-day meeting today, resolved to pay increased attention on converting ‘‘words to deeds’’ and conclaves to specific programmes.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri — also the Chairman of the Council of Ministers — said discussions revolved around implementation of decisions taken during January’s SAARC Summit. These included the determination to make poverty alleviation the overarching objective of SAARC, the framework agreement on SAFTA and the Additional Protocol on combating terrorism.

In this regard, Kasuri said specific proposals on poverty alleviation — like asking the SAARC Secretariat to come out with programmes on fighting poverty — were cleared. The Secretariat will be taking UNDP assistance in devising a strategy and will come out with a regional poverty profile soon.

Story continues below this ad

India’s proposals for setting up a South Asian Parliamentary Forum, a SAARC High Economic Council, a SAARC Infrastructure Fund and national committees in member countries to devise programmes to be undertaken under the SAARC Poverty Alleviation Fund were all approved by the Council. The Council decided to confer the SAARC Award 2004 to former Bangladesh President Zia-ur-Rehman who played a pivotal role in the formation of the association.

On the SAFTA front, Kasuri said, the Council took note of the three meetings of the committee of experts. The committee is expected hold at least three more meetings this year to resolve the issues on rules of origin, technical assistance to the least developed contracting states and also developing a mechanism for compensating the revenue loss to LDCs that they would incur on lowering tariffs. The next meeting of the committee is slated for early August at Thimpu. SAFTA is supposed to become operational from January 1, 2006.

EXCLUSIVE: EC brings in feature to check misuse of identity to seek voter list deletions

Political Pulse2 hr ago

The Election Commission has launched a new 'e-sign' feature on its portal and app to prevent fraud. This comes after allegations of misuse of online voter deletion forms in Karnataka. The feature requires voters to verify their identity using their Aadhaar-linked phone numbers, reducing the possibility of fraud.

View all shorts

Live Blog