The Hindu : Front Page : India ready to accept any date for SAARC meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 25, 2005

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Front Page

India ready to accept any date for SAARC meet

Siddharth Varadarajan

Entire gamut of ties with Bangladesh discussed

JAKARTA: More than two months after India forced a postponement of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in the wake of King Gyanendra's seizure of power in Nepal, the External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, has said that New Delhi is prepared to accept any suitable date for the meeting that Bangladesh, as summit host, wishes to propose.

Mr. Singh communicated this to the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Morshed Khan, at a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the just-concluded Asian-African summit here on Saturday. The two Ministers also discussed "the entire gamut of bilateral issues," an External Affairs Ministry press statement stated, making no note of the recent incident on the India-Bangladesh border in which a BSF company commander was killed.

India's decision to signal its willingness to let the SAARC summit be held — the presumption is sooner rather than later — comes in the wake of the recent change in policy towards King Gyanendra. In a meeting with the King in Jakarta on Saturday, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, agreed to lift the suspension of military supplies to the Royal Nepal Army imposed in the wake of the royal coup. In return, the King agreed to think about drawing up a road map for the restoration of democracy. On February 2, the Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, told reporters that India's decision to seek a postponement of the Dhaka summit "has been taken against the background of recent developments in our neighbourhood which have caused us grave concern." Asked specifically whether this was in response to King Gyanendra's coup, Mr. Saran said that "certainly, the developments in Nepal as well as the continuing and deteriorating security situation in Bangladesh are the two key factors."

Senior officials had said at the time that India did not want to legitimise King Gyanendra's takeover by allowing him "photo-ops" with Dr. Singh and other SAARC leaders at Dhaka.

Indeed, New Delhi believes the King timed his February 1 coup with an eye on the SAARC summit, which was scheduled for February 9.

Formally, however, the MEA had refused to link King Gyanendra to India's wish that the SAARC summit be postponed. "I do not think that our decision should be projected in terms of our willingness or unwillingness to share the platform with this or that leader. We have gone to SAARC summits in the past and shared the platform with various leaders of different political persuasions. I do not think that should be taken as the reason for our decision," Mr. Saran said.

Asked whether India was behaving like a "big brother" in getting the SAARC summit postponed, Mr. Saran had said that "If you have the kind of environment, political environment and security environment, which prevails today, we genuinely believe that the desired outcomes are not possible.

So, we should wait until the time is propitious to have such a very important and significant summit... Obviously, we would be looking for amelioration of the situation or an improvement of the situation which would dispel some of the concerns that we are expressing today".

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