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Saarc nations ink social charter

FTA treaty waits to be penned as summit begins amid wind of change

AGENCIES, Islamabad
The Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) member countries yesterday signed a landmark agreement on social charter in a bid to improve the socioeconomic condition of the region's populace.
The charter, signed at the end of the opening session of the three-day 12th summit, "reflects the commitment of states to pool efforts at national and regional levels to improve the social and economic conditions of the people", the new Saarc Chairman and Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah
Khan Jamali said.
A framework for South Asia Free Trade Area (Safta) will also be signed during the meet.
The summit opened in Islamabad yesterday with a call from host Pakistan for overcoming of political differences for economic growth in the South Asian
region and amid calls for unity and promises of a better raselationship between India and Pakistan.
Jamali said inking of the charter by the seven member states was a concrete step towards assuring the people a life of dignity, security and self-esteem.
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He said the charter aims at protecting human rights, gender equality, women empowerment and social security.
Motorcades of black armoured Limousines ferried leaders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives to the Jinnah Convention Centre where the three-day summit will unfold.
Outside, 10,000 police and commandos enforced a near lockdown on the deserted streets. All shops in a so-called "red zone" around the convention centre were shut.
The summit will start breaking down regional trade frontiers from 2006 to create a free trade zone in one of the world's most populous and poorest regions.
"This indeed is a landmark decision, " Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said as he announced agreement on a framework for the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (Safta).
The Safta agreement will take effect from January 1, 2006 once it is approved during the summit.
Implementation of the new tariff regime offers three sets of deadlines according to member states' varying economic prowess.
"Pakistan and India will complete Safta implementation by the year 2009 whereas Sri Lanka will take another year (2010) to bring its tariff down to five to zero percent," Pakistani commerce ministry spokesman Zafar Qadir said.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Nepal, with weaker economies, have received concessions to avail of a longer deadline that would end by 2013.
Kasuri said each member state would be allowed to maintain a sensitive list of products on which tariff would not be reduced.
Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga described the treaty as a "historic step for regional economic cooperation."
"As the pioneer South Asian state to undertake economic liberalisation, Sri Lanka welcomes the conclusion of Safta, even though we possess a small and vulnerable economy," Kumaratunga said in her address to the opening of the South Asia summit.
"It is necessary that we keep in mind that short term losses would be compensated by the opportunities gained from trade expansion under Safta."
Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia proposed compensation for the smaller economies and a separate timeframe for them.
Khaleda told the summit's
opening that the new trade regime could include "special measures for the least developed countries" like an adequate timeframe for freeing trade; compensatory financing for revenue loss and the concept of early harvest.
The Saarc leaders will also update a decades-old agreement to combat international terrorism, bringing it into line with United Nations resolutions to choke off terrorist financing.
But the chief focus will be outside the summit's official multilateral agenda -- the steadily improving relations between India and Pakistan, whose hostility ran so deep a year ago that the scheduled summit then was cancelled. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee arrived on Pakistani soil for the first time in nearly five years Saturday and was greeted with exceptional warmth at the airport -- closed to commercial flights for security reasons -- by his Pakistani counterpart, Zafarullah Khan Jamali.
Jamali and Vajpayee entered the convention center side by side and jointly took their seats.
Vajpayee used the opening ceremony to call for a "bold transition" to peace after a half-century of conflict and mistrust.
"We have to change South Asia's image and its standing in the world," Vajpayee said.
"We must make the bold transition from mistrust to trust, from discord to concord and from tension to peace," he continued, to applause.