Manmohan: let us fight terror together

NEW DELHI, Friday (The Hindu) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to fight terrorism together.

"We have a collective stake in ensuring peace and security in the SAARC region because no investor will come to this region if there is no assurance of peace and security," he said, inaugurating the first SAARC Business Leaders' Conclave here.

"To imagine that anyone of us can pursue what economists call `beggar-thy-neighbour' policies and thereby prosper is to delude oneself," Dr. Singh said, underlining that the SAARC business community had a vital stake in regional security and in victory in the war on terror.

"We must join hands to put our collective house in order as peace in the region will benefit all. Terrorism anywhere will hurt us all," he said. Business and trade would flourish in a secure environment.

"Terrorism, by whatever name, has no place in civilised societies and its basic goal is to cause insecurity," Dr. Singh said.

In an interconnected region and a globalised world, the consequences of both poverty and insecurity were indivisible. "No country in this region can be secure when others are insecure and no country can insulate itself from the consequences of poverty and terrorism in any other country."

As envisioned at the 13th SAARC summit, the member-countries would forge stronger links on the basis of renewed people-to-people ties, to help strengthen the region-wide partnership for prosperity, he said.

The Prime Minister allayed fears that free trade agreement could hurt smaller countries and called upon the SAARC leaders to move rapidly to meet the deadline for the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).

Dr. Singh said the need for implementing SAFTA could not be overemphasised. It was expected that its implementation would enhance trade in the region to $ 14 billion from $ 6 billion in the next two years.

Citing the high growth of bilateral trade between India and Sri Lanka, he said it dispelled fears on both sides that free trade would hurt business in smaller countries.

"This free trade agreement is a win-win agreement for both the countries and could be a model for similar agreements in the region," he said. The Prime Minister hoped that the free trade agreement would help move towards the eventual goal of the South Asian Economic Union.

"I do believe that just as regional integration is not antithetical to globalisation, it also does not hurt the broader interests of any member of a regional group."

Dr. Singh said all the member-states were committed to an early resolution of outstanding issues under SAFTA and hoped that the ongoing negotiations would ensure that it was operationalised from January 1 next.

He also focussed on the need for expanding the ambit of SAFTA to include trade in services, in addition to widening the scope of trade in goods, for it to emerge as an effective vehicle for growth and regional integration.

Voicing his concern that SAARC had not succeeded in exploiting the immense economic potential of the region, he said that even after two decades, "intra-SAARC exports are a mere five per cent of the total exports of the region.

By comparison intra-E.U. exports are 55.2 per cent, intra-NAFTA exports are 51.7 per cent and intra-ASEAN exports are 20.4 per cent."