Peace and security vital for economic progress within SAARC region - Bogollagama

"During the last two decades our association was able to charter various projects and programs to achieve its objectives. However, it is essential to have peace and security to have meaningful economic and social progress in the SAARC region," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs Rohitha Bogollagama.

Addressing the SAARC Council of Ministers at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday, the Minister said that Sri Lanka strongly feels that it is time that we focus on strengthening practical measures of cooperation in terms of the existing instruments on suppression of terrorism in SAARC and other multilateral fora, while reaffirming our commitment to condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations to ensure a region free of violence and terrorism.

He was happy to note that SAARC was moving from declaratory statements to the implementation process.

Towards this end we support the proposal to rationalise and prioritise the activities on the broad principles of progress made in the sectors and the requirement of high level interaction and regional priority and needs.

He said that after four years of intense negotiations among us, we reached an agreement as a first step towards creating a free trade area in South Asia which would develop Trade in Services and finally reach the goal of creating a SAARC economic union.

This move has made the international community repose confidence in the regional association. Therefore to keep the momentum going and also to prepare us as a region to face the challenges posed by globalisation in the 21st century we should carefully ensure that the SAFTA agreement is fully implemented.

We should also address all related issues to create a conducive environment for all member countries to freely conduct trade in the region.

Implementation of SAFTA will inject a new sense of dynamism and take the association to a greater level of economic prosperity, he said.

Foreign Ministers of all seven SAARC countries with the latest addition to the SAARC, Afghanistan participated in the meeting chaired by the Minister of External Affairs of India Pranab Mukherjee.