The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan will seize world’s attention once again in April 2010 when it hosts the 16th summit of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) for the first time since the organisation came into being in 1985.
Bhutan will host the two-day regional conference where eight heads of state and government from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will take part.
“It will greatly enhance Bhutan’s international image as a sovereign, independent, responsible and equal member country,” said the Prime Minister of Bhutan Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley, according to a report of Bhutan’s national newspaper Kuensel.
“We are now prepared in terms of the administration, infrastructure and the foreign ministry being ready to host the summit,” said Lyonchhoen.
“It is also like a coming of age for Bhutan,” said the prime minister adding that the leaders would be visiting a country that had successfully and peacefully made a transition to democracy inspired by His Majesty, the King.
Bangladesh has welcomed Bhutan’s decision to host the summit for the first time since the birth of Saarc mooted in Dhaka in 1985.
When contacted, Foreign Secretary Towhid Hossain told The Daily Star that Bangladesh would definitely attend the Saarc summit. “All the formalities regarding attending the summit have almost been completed,” he said.
The venue for the next year’s summit was the Maldives, which has now been shifted to the Himalayan kingdom. Last year the 15th summit was held in Colombo in August 2008.
Bhutan had skipped the opportunity to host the Saarc summit three times on the ground of the country’s infrastructure. The summit will be held in Thimphu on the currently proposed dates April 28-29, 2010.
The summit is also important for Bhutan since it is actually obligatory for each member state to host the summit. It was actually Maldives’s turn to host the 2010 summit.
The summit would also allow bilateral meetings at the sidelines between the leaders of member countries. They will discuss all matters of mutual interest and appraise each other of global and regional issues, officials said.
They said the summit would promote good neighbourly relations among Saarc countries, as different countries could meet and discuss.
The Saarc secretariat in Kathmandu has already begun consultations with other member states, including the newly inducted Afghanistan, to finalise the dates proposed by the Bhutan government.
Bhutanese Prime Minister Thinley has proposed April 28-29, which would have to be confirmed by India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Afghanistan and Nepal.
Though initially it was the Maldives’ turn to host the 16th summit, the SAARC Council of Foreign Ministers who met in Colombo in February agreed with Bhutan’s request as the Maldives expressed inability to host the summit due to financial recession.
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