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| SAARC: Can hope and history rhyme? | | India needs a complex policy of stepping up its own development and project assistance to SAARC members, drawing in Japan, Republic of Korea and the EU as counter-weights to Chinese moves | | K.C. Singh
The 18th SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit was held on November 26-27 at Kathmandu. Not surprisingly, the focus remained on India-Pakistan relations rather than the summit's theme: Deeper Integration for Peace and Prosperity. After all, the India-Pakistan "composite dialogue" was born on the sidelines of the Maldives Saarc summit in 1997 and fathered by the then Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, I.K. Gujral and Nawaz Sharif.
The hijacking of the summit by India-Pakistan was never greater than during the 1998 Colombo summit when the two neighbours were seen together for the first time after the tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998. At the opening, the media noticed and reported that when Prime Minister Vajpayee reached for the water bottle at the table, Nawaz Sharif, seated next to him, pried it open for him.
The Kathmandu summit also elicited particular interest as Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif were to be seen together after their warm encounter in Delhi in May, which was followed by bitterness in India-Pakistan relations, leading to the cancellation of foreign secretary talks. Mr Sharif's stature had shrunk meanwhile as he leant on the Army to deter the hordes of Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri from overrunning Islamabad and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government. Mr Modi, contrariwise, had risen in international estimation with successful forays to the United Nations, Brics summit, Washington and then high-profile visits to Nepal and Bhutan and the combining of bilateral visits with attending the East Asia Summit and the G-20 meeting in Australia.
Crisis began with the NDA government, apparently for domestic political reasons, breaking of engagement with Pakistan over their high commissioner's meeting with Hurriyat leaders. The same could have been done over the Pakistani Army breaching the Line of Control ceasefire repeatedly, or simply the deteriorating situation in Islamabad. The latter two reasons were reviewable, whereas for any Pakistani leader to abandon the Hurriyat openly would be politically lethal. The Modi government claimed that this was to delineate new "red lines". If so, why were they not conveyed to Mr Sharif in May, before announcing foreign secretary-level talks.
August's rancour persisted with Mr Modi giving Mr Sharif a miss in New York, where both PMs were attending the UN General Assembly in September. Thus public interest was inevitable in a Modi-Sharif interaction or its omission in Kathmandu. The issue emerged first indirectly as to whether Pakistan, in league with hosts Nepal, was pushing for full membership of Saarc for China, which is currently one of nine observers, which include the US, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mauritius, Burma, EU, etc. The reasoning was that upgradation should be offered to those likely to bring development assistance to the region.
Although India thwarted it for the time being, dubbing it premature before Saarc's consolidation, China will probably link it to India and Pakistan joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which is China's instrument for Central Asian dominance. It is also inevitable that China's deep pockets and ability to finance and execute large projects will make its presence in Saarc attractive against the backdrop of its infrastructure development banks.
India needs a complex policy of stepping up its own development and project assistance to SAARC members, drawing in Japan, Republic of Korea and the EU as counter-weights to Chinese moves and slowly allowing select observers to graduate to dialogue partner status. Noticeably, the 36-point Kathmandu Declaration focuses on poverty alleviation, environment, health, education - all millennium development goals adopted by the UN in 2000 and to be reviewed in 2015.
Connectivity is critical to Saarc's success. Three resolutions on road, train and power linkages were tabled, but apparently met resistance from Pakistan, cold-shouldered by Mr Modi and wary of India gaining from them. Pakistan was messaging that for Saarc to function, leave aside flourish, India-Pakistan amity was necessary. The European Union was conceived only when France and Germany put their historical bitterness behind them. While the Bharatiya Janata Party is right in re-calibrating tactics to deal with a Pakistan whose military is pathologically anti-India and jihadis work mostly in tandem with it, the door should be kept open to discussion at the political level. Mr Sharif is the main instrument available to handle the spoilers, imperfect as he is. Talking to him, without leaping to full resumption of dialogue, and developing a new bouquet of incentives and disincentives, or even a new format for discussion at multiple levels, is preferable to drawing red lines unilaterally.
The Framework Agreement for Energy Cooperation (Electricity) provides the means for hydropower and thermal resources of some members used for the good of all. Similarly, gas pipelines from neighbouring regions criss-crossing South Asia can provide vital clean energy. Konrad Adenauer, post-war Chancellor of West Germany and proponent of the European Union, in 1956 said integration could no longer "be considered primarily from the point of view of the past, but we must see it with an eye to the future". He warned that otherwise "Europe will retire from the stage of world events". Henry Kissinger, in his book World Order, concludes that for a new stable world order, regional stable orders have to emerge and coalesce. Thus for a stable Asia, South Asia is a building block, China's orderly rise being the constant determinant for both.
SAARC, thus, is not a dispensable club notorious for India-Pakistan diplomatic one-upmanship. It is a building block of new Asian security architecture. The next summit is in Pakistan. Will diplomacy make it a historic Modi trip or a year hence the debate shall be whether he should go at all. Can, as Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote, "hope and history rhyme?"
Courtesy :
Asianage .com |
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