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Challenge ahead in fighting terrorism, natural disaster

Morshed says on Saarc summit

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan yesterday said South Asian leaders should take practical steps to deal with new challenges of natural disaster and terrorism at the upcoming 13th Saarc Summit in Dhaka.
“These are the new global challenges but South Asia cannot live in isolation,” he told diplomatic corps at his office on the focus of the summit, which has already been deferred twice.
Leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) are expected to make directions at the Dhaka summit on November 12-13 to move the forum forward, he added.
On Saarc programmes for dealing with natural disaster, he said every region should maintain preparedness to face the calamities like tsunami, cyclone or earthquake.
He said the summit will greatly focus, among other issues, on how to jointly tackle natural disasters and strengthen early warning system through effective cooperation.
On terrorism, Khan said concerted efforts are required to eliminate global terrorism. “We must get over the unfortunate religious division -terrorists and Islamic terrorists.”
“We must come out of this mental block,” the minister said, asserting
that there is nothing called Islamic terrorist.
It is a big challenge for the Saarc leaders to hold the Dhaka summit and implement all its decisions successfully, he added.
Morshed admitted the Saarc could not make any major contributions to improving the economic status of the region's common people, who make up one-fifth of the world population.
The Saarc comprised of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka was formally launched in Dhaka in December 1985.
He said although the intra regional trade is a paltry 3-4 percent, Saarc members have a 450-million-strong middle class -- bigger than the combined population of the US and Canada or of the European Union.
Citing an example of trade in regional groupings, he said the EU trading is 66 percent among its member states and the Asean has 28 percent.
“We have market of our own… we are working to get into substantial partnership to achieve the economic integration of South Asia,” he said. He expressed the hope someday the economic integration will lead to South Asian union like the EU or the Asean.
The minister regretted the fact that so many decisions had been adopted at previous summits but not been implemented, “maybe by default or by design”.
Bangladesh is poised to assume the next Saarc chair, Morshed said, adding that the upcoming summit will mark the beginning of Saarc's third decade, and “we would like to see it as a decade of implementation.”