Mr. Chairman, Your Majesties, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is with great pleasure that I am representing my country at this SAARC Summit in the delightful city of Bangalore, India’s fifth largest centre. India is a country with which the Maldives have had strong ties for many centuries, and with whom our bilateral relations have developed rapidly in recent years. I wish to thank the Government and people of India for the generous hospitality they have accorded to me, my wife and members of my delegation.
Mr. Chairman, I must go further and pay a special tribute to you at this time. The world has seen you lead your nation with wisdom and courage and yet fly half way round the world in recent months to play India’s important role in world affairs. In spite of these preoccupations, you have dedicated much of your time towards consolidating India’s traditional ties with your neighbours and to promote the spirit of cooperation within our region. I am confident that under your stewardship SAARC will continue to grow from strength to strength.
I also take this opportunity to express my country’s sincere appreciation to our first chairman, His Excellency Hussain Muhammad Ershad, President of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, for his valuable contribution to the progress of our Association since the historic First Summit in Dhaka.
Mr. Chairman, overlaying all my feelings today as I address you is one of renewed resolve. These two Summit meetings have been the catalysts of hard work by all our countries at technical as well as at ministerial level. Over the last year, many of us have also had the opportunity of discussing matters relevant to SAARC either bilaterally or in entirely different gatherings.
The main theme of regional cooperation, as embodied in our Charter, is to work together towards utilising the vast human and material resources of our region for the common good of our peoples. The task before us is to find ways and means of attaining that goal. The subcontinent, in which five of our seven member countries are situated, is a land of largesse. With a total land mass equivalent to double the size of the European Common Market countries, and with three times their total human resources, we have, so to speak, hardly dug the topsoil of our foundations for our mutual benefit.
When we contemplate the volume of agricultural produce that compose our annual exports and consider the wide range of products manufactured in our region, it becomes clear that on a collective basis we have many jewels in our crown. And with the technology available in some of our countries, added to the hydro-electric potential of our mountainous regions, there is no doubt that we have all the makings of a regional industrial revolution.
However, as we live in an increasingly interdependent world, it will not be an easy task to develop our resources if the world economic situation remains unchanged, for it is a fact that since our last meeting in Dhaka the international economic climate has, if anything, deteriorated further. The debt problem facing many third world nations has become an enormous obstacle to their economic growth. Although voluntary and government donations to famine relief in Africa in 1985 amounted to over 2,500 million pounds, 5,000 million pounds was taken back by Western banks, governments and financial institutions in debt repayments. The poor are winning some important battles but there are more hungry people in the world today than there were a decade ago.
Mr. Chairman, it has become quite evident that no significant economic recovery can be achieved anywhere in the world without drastic cuts in the military spending of major powers. About 800 million people around the globe are living in poverty, but the world continues to spend almost 1.5 million dollars a minute on armaments. Put another way, aid assistance allocations to the developing world in one whole year are equivalent to the world’s military spending for only 15 days and 15 hours. However one looks at it, these indications are bad news to us as they are to the whole of humanity. Humanity does not need nuclear missiles or weapons of mass destruction; it needs to feed its peoples; it needs to save them from ignorance and disease; and, above all, it needs peace.
This brings me to the subject of South-South cooperation which holds out hope for finding realistic solutions to problems highly relative to SAARC’s objectives. The Maldives is happy to learn of the formation of an Independent Commission of the South on development issues. Under the Chairmanship of President Julius Nyerere, and a panel of many highly qualified and dedicated persons, the Commission will hopefully establish and define realistic proposals for South-South cooperation. While we are exerting our best efforts to strengthen and expand the scope of cooperation in our region, it is important to interact with the others in the South for the purpose of achieving the goal of self-reliance and self-help.
Mr. Chairman, it is not only the gloomy prospects for world economic revival and of a better deal for the third world that we have to contend with. The world political situation has shown no improvement either since we last met. We are assembled today in the aftermath of worldwide disappointment following the East-West Summit in Reykjavik. If both sides had shown sufficient resolution, we might well be rejoicing today in a major nuclear arms reduction agreement between the two super powers. Instead, the breakthrough, which the entire world had hoped for, failed to materialise. Closer at hand, the Indian Ocean, which is of vital importance to the security and stability of our region, continues to be a potential area of tension with no prospect of an early implementation of the UN resolution declaring the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace.
Mr. Chairman, the spirit generated at our last Summit has been instrumental in keeping the momentum of SAARC. Several SAARC meetings were held during the past year and an extensive exchange of ideas and experiences took place in many crucial areas. The ministerial meetings held to consider international economic issues and the role of women in development have shown that much can be done in these vital fields. Important subjects such as drug trafficking and abuse, and international terrorism are under active consideration by expert groups. We have to push forward vigorously to formulate strategies and programmes that will make regional cooperation an effective vehicle for shared progress and prosperity.
In seeking this objective, Mr. Chairman, I cannot help but express the feeling that more efforts have to be exerted towards making progress on bilateral matters among member states. By saying this, I am only venturing to suggest that millions of people in all our countries will expect us to make SAARC a success. For SAARC to become a success, a high degree of understanding among our nations is essential. And, more often than not, the modalities worked out on a bilateral basis could become a proven example of successful cooperation from which we as a whole can indeed benefit. We want regional cooperation to play a major role in the social and economic development of the peoples of our Association, creating a unity as never before in our history.
The progress we make in strengthening our Association may continue to be slow. But, already, by facing differences together, we are encouraged to overcome such others as may come our way, just as we can point to a happy record of agreement and unanimity on many matters. In fact, I feel that in years to come, others will look back at this fascinating formative period in SAARC’s history with enormous interest and wonder, amazed how we could contrive to blend the assets and interests of a region so rich in variety. For in truth, Mr. Chairman, I believe we have yet to recognise half our strengths or marshal half our resources.