India-Pakistan Peace Key to South Asia Development

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, January 07, 2002

India-Pakistan Peace Key to South Asia Development

Leaders of the seven South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations concluded Sunday their first summit in the new century in Kathmandu, Nepal, after pledging to strengthen regional socio-economic cooperation for development.

But peace, especially that between India and Pakistan, is instrumental to achieve the goal of development in the war- and conflict-plagued region.

Civil wars, social unrest and international conflicts in South Asia have dragged more than 400 million residents there into poverty and misery, greatly hindering the development of national economies of SAARC members and the development of socio-economic cooperation between them.

The association groups India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

More than 50 years of hostility between India and Pakistan, two important SAARC members, dwarfed their national economies as they have been going all out to step up their respective national defense.

Wars and conflicts between the two countries, regarded the biggest stumbling block to peace and stability in South Asia, blew into the thin air a South Asian Free Trade Area, which was originally planned to be set up in 2001.

South Asia remains one of the poorest regions in the world, with 40 percent of its 1.3 billion people living under the poverty line. The region has one fifth of the world's total population, yet its share of global gross domestic product was less than 2 percent.

Tension has returned between India and Pakistan since December 13 when the Indian parliament was attacked. India blamed two Pakistani-based groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, for the attack and demanded Pakistan crack down on the groups and arrest their leaders.

India has moved more troops to the border, saying it was responding to a Pakistani buildup and the two sides exchanged heavy mortars and machine-gun fire in Kashmir, a region the two sides have disputed for half a century.

The firing of one mortar would cost India 250 U.S. dollars, more than half of the annual income of an ordinary Indian or Pakistani citizen, an Argentine newspaper calculated.

Even in time of peace, the two nations have paid dearly for their hostile history, the paper said.

In Pakistan, the Pervez Musharraf government invests 2 billion dollars every year in national defense, accounting for a quarter of the national revenue. India, with a population of more than 1 billion, spends each year in defense 13 billion dollars, 17 percent of its budget and five times as much as the yearly allowances given to the poorest.

International sanctions upon the two nations for their 1998 nuclear tests brought vast impact upon Pakistan, aborting its economic revitalization plan and depriving it of the ability to pay off foreign debts.

The hope and plans to alleviate poverty and improve living conditions in the two big South Asian countries, which have a decisive role to play in stabilizing the region, would fade if they go for another war.

But history has proven that hostility and conflicts could do little in solving disputes. War and confrontation never contributes to the solution to the Kashmir issue, but peaceful

talks help a lot.

India-Pakistan relations entered a new stage in February 1999, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration for peace. The two countries carried out bilateral cooperation in certain fields and regularly exchanged lists of nuclear facilities as a good-will gesture.

Though Musharraf and Vajpayee did not hold separate talks at the two-day summit, they shook hands twice, giving hope that the two rivals would live up to the expectations of the world community to make peace and settle their dispute by peaceful means.

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