Foreign ministers save the day at SAARC meet

COLOMBO, March 21: A newspaper here has published an account of how the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, assisted by their Sri La...

COLOMBO, March 21: A newspaper here has published an account of how the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, assisted by their Sri Lankan counterpart, overcame an unexpected obstacle created by officials of both countries at the recently concluded SAARC ministerial conference at Nuwara Eliya.

During the conference, Indian and Pakistani officials clashed over the reference to the Lahore Declaration in the foreign secretaries’ report, the document that is adopted by the council of ministers and is meant to be a road map for SAARC.

India’s contention was that the Lahore Declaration was a bilateral matter and should not figure in a SAARC document. Pakistan insisted that it was not a contentious issue, but one that had been widely welcomed by everyone, including Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga in her inaugural address at the conference.

The officials also argued over references to a SAARC-appointed committee’s recommendation for a mechanism to institutionalise informal political consultationsat SAARC meetings.

In the absence of consensus over this and the reference to the Lahore Declaration, the report, known as the Standing Committee report, was reduced to a few paragraphs relating to the SAARC budget and the restructuring of the secretariat. In effect, it left the regional grouping with few future plans.

The foreign secretaries decided to pass on this document for further action to the ministers, who were waiting for the report before beginning their conference.

According to the Sunday Times, when Lakshman Kadirgamar, foreign minister of Sri Lanka which currently holds the SAARC chair, was handed over the one-page Standing Committee report, he is reported to have described it as a "disgrace" that could not be permitted to enter the annals of SAARC.

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Kadirgamar, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz then went into a meeting to thrash out a compromise which would save SAARC’s agenda from collapsing over the Lahore Declaration. During themeeting, Kadirgamar, a lawyer by profession, used the back of an envelope to draft the reference to the declaration in a way that would offend neither India nor Pakistan. It went in the form of a thank you’ to the Lahore Declaration for reiterating the commitment of India and Pakistan to the goals of SAARC.

The paragraph on "informal political consultations" also stuck to the safe side and was a reiteration of the reference to it in the 1998 Colombo Declaration.

With both Singh and Aziz prepared to overlook the objections of their respective officials, the foreign secretaries were directed to redo a comprehensive Standing Committee report, saving the conference from derailing. The newspaper stressed the crucial role that Kadirgamar had played as a "strong" chairman of the council of ministers.