RESUSCITATING SAARC AT Summit No. 11

SAARC is at such a point in its history that it must now be moving, and be seen to be moving, decisively forward. The alternative is regression and obsolescence

The SAARC process survives on the summits, and during the sometimes extended gaps between meetings it wanders like a rudderless ship, without any power or a sense of direction. Since the organisation was established in 1985, at least four scheduled summits have been scuttled for various reasons. The first was in 1989, when President Ranasinghe Premadasa of Sri Lanka expressed his inability to hold the meeting given the presence of the Indian peacekeeping force (IPKF) in his country. The venue was moved to the Maldives the next year, but when Sri Lanka prepared to hold the following Summit in 1991, it had to be postponed at the last minute as King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan expressed his inability to attend on "health grounds". The situation proved to be embarrassing for the host country and to SAARC itself, particularly since the leaders of Pakistan and Bangladesh had already arrived in Colombo for the summit. In December 1993, the summit scheduled for Dhaka could not be held due to the communal riots that engulfed India and some of its neighbouring countries in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. And in November 1999, India called for a postponement of the Summit in Kathmandu just two weeks before the event, "on account of the military coup d'etat in Pakistan".