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Coronavirus : Pakistan boycotts India-led meeting of SAARC trade officials

Pakistan on Wednesday boycotted a video conference of trade officials from the SAARC countries, saying such meetings could only be effective if spearheaded by the group’s secretariat instead of India.

The conference was convened to discuss the impact of coronavirus in the region and how the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) forum could come up with a common strategy.

In the virtual conference, the trade officials broadly agreed to identify new ways to “sustain and expand” the intra-regional trade to offset the huge economic cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

The deliberations took place as a follow up to an India-initiated video conference of SAARC leaders on March 15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested in the conference that the member nations of the bloc should come together to jointly fight the pandemic.

Shortly after the conference, Pakistan’s Foreign Office in a statement said, “Activities such as today’s Trade Officials’ Video-Conference could only be effective if spearheaded by the SAARC Secretariat. Since the SAARC Secretariat was not part of today’s Video-Conference, Pakistan chose not to participate.”

In order for the SAARC process to move forward, the SAARC Secretariat must be enabled to play its due role in any event or activity being organised under its auspices, the statement said.

“The role of the secretariat assumes further salience in emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and its wider social and economic fallout,” the Foreign Office said.

The statement said as, in the case of other regional and international organisations, the SAARC secretariat also provides the requisite convening platform, institutional framework and support structure for essential coordination and follow-up.

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