BIMSTEC and SAARC Summit: Civil Services Mentor Magazine: November - 2016

BIMSTEC and SAARC Summit

Indian government announced that it will not participate in the 19th SAARC summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad after the attack on Uri Army base. There was already a rethink afoot on India’s participation after the shabby treatment meted out to Home Minister Rajnath Singh during his visit to Islamabad to attend the SAARC Home Ministers’ meeting. Unlike during past conventions, the Pakistan media blacked out the speech that Singh delivered at the meeting. Unlike in the past when SAARC summits have been postponed due to one member state’s decision not to attend the summit, this time India is not alone. Almost all other member states – Afghanistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh etc.– have decided not to attend the summit in Islamabad and have conveyed their decisions to the current SAARC chair Nepal. The issue of terrorism is not new to SAARC. Although member countries had signed and ratified the 1988 SAARC convention on Terrorism as well as the additional protocol on terrorism in 2003, these have proved inadequate to deal with state-sponsored terrorism. The ambiguous definition of terrorism and the complex clauses of the protocol make the fight against terrorism a non-starter. The issue of terrorism in the region has always been taken up bilaterally, and there are instances of successful bilateral collaboration. This is, however, the first time that there is a strong regional reaction to a member state’s sponsorship of terrorism.