India has said on Sunday it was optimistic that Saarc member countries would maintain the schedule of South Asia Free Trade Agreement (Safta) adding that New Delhi was satisfied with the proceeding of negotiations.
"India is optimistic that the schedule for the accord will be maintained," Suryakanthi Tripathi, additional secretary of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said at a news conference following Sunday's session.
She said that the Saarc meeting would not discuss the issues of peace and security for these are not substantive issues under Saarc charter.
She said the member states had announced decisions in three or four major areas; first was an agreement on Safta, another was on a social charter, and the third was when an additional protocol was signed on the convention on the suppression of terrorism.
"We are drawing up the work plans for Saarc as a whole. For us poverty alleviation is one of the most important objectives. In fact, it's one of the overarching goals of Saarc," she said.
Suryakanthi said the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had pledged an amount of $100 million for undertaking poverty alleviation projects in the region. Work would be done to review the progress made so far, how to collect the funds, their disbursement and monitoring.
She informed the media persons that the agenda largely included economic issues like Safta. The agreement, she said, will be effective by January 2006 and a lot of detailed issues have to be worked out and agreed upon by the member states.
So essentially, this is the scope of work for the council of ministers, for which the preparatory meetings are now taking place, she said.
There have been three meetings so far with experts participating from all the Saarc countries, she said adding, "Obviously, it's a free trade agreement. In which the trade of seven countries is involved, so it requires fairy detailed negotiations."
This is an issue that has been agreed upon at the 12th Summit, so we will have to work out how to implement it.
Regarding expansion of the forum to include other countries, she said that it was not discussed. However, she added that the Council of Ministers might take it up.
About progress on the ratification of additional protocol on terrorism, she said it is not yet complete and discussions were going on. She said Bangladesh had offered to host the meeting, however co-operation between police and security personnel was also discussed.