In another bid to get Pakistan to allow the transit of Indian goods to Afghanistan, India will use the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit to push for a “comprehensive regional transport arrangement.” With Afghanistan joining the bloc at the SAARC Summit, which New Delhi is hosting on April 3 and 4, India proposes to extend the scope of SAARC multi-modal transport study (SRMTS) to that country as well. The study by the Asian Development Bank has already identified many intra-regional corridors for increasing connectivity among SAARC nations—including the Dhaka-Lahore road corridor—which India hopes, can now be extended up to Kabul. The Cabinet Committee on security had already cleared a proposal to overhaul 13 Integrated Check Posts (ICPs) and set up a Land Ports Authority of India to identify points on land and riverine borders as landports, and then plan and implement their development. First of the four ICPs, expected to be implemented by end of 2007 or early 2008, include the Petrapole in West Bengal that borders Bangladesh and Wagah border with Pakistan, Moreh in Manipur along the Bhutan border and Raxaul on the Nepal border. And the transport network through Nepal and Bhutan will give India vital connectivity to the North-East. With Kabul on the radar now, the corridor will begin in the North-East and end in the Afghan capital, provided India nudges Pakistan to get the transit rights. India will also root for the “harmonising” and simplifying the rules governing the transit issues in the SAARC countries—such as customs procedures, standardisation, reciprocal recognition tests certification and banking. These measures, India hopes, will help the cause of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) and the “reciprocal transit rights” among the SAARC nations. The SRMTs, which already identified 10 regional road corridors, five regional rail corridors besides 16 aviation gateways and 10 maritime gateways already came up for discussions at the second SAFTA Ministerial Council meeting in February this year. The study, which was undertaken at the Islamabad summit in 2004, had recommended that SAARC member states required to “resolve the identified and non-identified physical barriers in order to put in place a SAARC Regional Multi-Modal Transport System. The study also pointed out that the South Asia has inherited an “integrated transport infrastructure” from the British, which was fractured not only because of the partition but also due to the political aftermath of it, and needs to be rebuilt. The proposal for a regional telemedicine network, which India proposed during the last summit in Dhaka, has entered an advanced stage with the modalities for starting a pilot project having been finalised. Also, the internal governmental agreement for establishing a Food Bank has been finalised along with the proposal of a SAARC museum of textiles and handicrafts ahead of the summit.
