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Official Spokesman: Good afternoon. Let me bring you up to date on some recent developments related to SAARC, specifically speaking the SAFTA.
To give you some background to begin with, a framework agreement on the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) was signed during the 3rd Summit in Islamabad in 2004. And upon successful resolution of outstanding issues, SAFTA has come into effect retrospectively from Jan 01, 2006 and is to be operationalized through a phased trade liberalization programme which covers all tariff lines except those kept in the sensitive or negative list by each member country. In Nov 2005, at the 13th SAARC Summit in Dhaka, the leaders of the SAARC countries had reaffirmed their commitment to accelerate cooperation in economic and commercial fields. They had stressed the importance of timely entering into force of the SAFTA agreement on the scheduled date and stated that launching of SAFTA would mark an important milestone on the road to a South Asian Economic Union. They had further directed that the negotiations and outstanding issues on SAFTA be completed on time to facilitate the operationalisation of the agreement.
We have now seen the notification issued by the Government of Pakistan. This notification is SRO No. 695(1)2006 dated July 01, 2006 regarding tariff concessions under SAFTA for SAARC member countries. The notification states that goods can be imported into Pakistan under the agreed SAFTA tariff concessions “subject to import policy order notified by the Ministry of Commerce”. This last qualification refers to the import policy order of July 21, 2005 which limits SAFTA tariff concessions for India only to items on the existing bilateral positive list. We regard this action as against the very essence of SAFTA. SAFTA operates on the basis of agreed sensitive lists. SAFTA has little operational meaning if member countries do not honour their commitments in letter and in spirit. The credibility of the participating member country and SAFTA itself will be seriously questioned if attempts are made to introduce additional conditionalities that were neither discussed nor agreed to when SAFTA was being negotiated. Any efforts to subject SAFTA to such conditionalities would be a derogation of the agreement. It would also contradict the commitment made by the leaders at the 13th SAARC Summit. India has along argued that if South Asia has to become a dynamic component of the larger process of regional cooperation and globalization that is taking place in the world, it must first bring about economic integration amongst SAARC member countries otherwise SAARC runs the risk of being left far behind other regional organisations.
On our part, India is fully committed to honour its commitments and prepare to shoulder a major share of responsibility to promote intra-regional and other forms of economic and technical cooperation. Some more background on this will be made available to you.
Also, I thought I would share more on the issue of civilian prisoners. In pursuance of the understanding between the Governments of India and Pakistan during Home Secretary level talks in Islamabad on 30-31 May 2006, India, on 30 June 2006 released 38 Pakistani civilian prisoners whose nationality had been confirmed and who had completed their sentences. The agreement between the two countries also provides for facilitating consular access by 31 July 2006 to the remaining civilian prisoners whose lists have been received by 15 June 2006. In implementation of this agreement, India will be providing consular access to Pakistani civilian prisoners as per the following time schedule. In Central Jail, Damdam, Kolkata 10-11 July, Central Jail, Jaipur 13-14 July, Central Jail, Amritsar, 20-21 July, Central Jail, Tihar, New Delhi, 27-28 July and Consular access to Pakistani fishermen is scheduled for 13 July 2006 at Jamnagar, Gujarat. At the same time, the Government of India hopes that the Government of Pakistan will reciprocate by providing consular access to 118 civilian prisoners and 192 fishermen in custody in Pakistan by 31 July 2006.
For your background information, currently there are 136 Indian prisoners in Pakistan and these are detailed in different categories as follows: Out of the 136, 16 are those to whom consular access has already been given and whose nationality confirmation is being awaited, 2 are those to whom consular access has already been given and whose nationality status has also been confirmed, and 118 are those for whom we have sought consular access.
Question: Apparently, IAEA team is in Delhi for talks with the Ministry of External Affairs. Can you give more details?
Official Spokesman: I can tell you that, yes, the IAEA team is here and discussions are going on regarding the contours of an India-specific safeguard agreement as has already been indicated in the separation plan submitted to the Parliament.
Question: How many people are there in the IAEA team?
Official Spokesman: I don’t have the detailed list of the delegation.
Question: Who is leading the Indian delegation?
Official Spokesman: I will have to check on that. As I told you I don’t have a list of the two delegations.
Question: Are they here for two days?
Official Spokesman: Yes, 7th and 8th July. Talks are tomorrow ( July 8th )
Question: There are reports in the Pakistani media that say that India is planning to send troops to Afghanistan?
Official Spokesman: Well, all that I can say is that these news reports are mischievous and totally baseless.
Question: There were reports in a daily about India siding with the OIC against Israel?
Official Spokesman: I am glad you raised that because that report also had a fairly distorted perspective. Let me give you the factual position on that. The factual position is that the special session of the Human Rights Council was called not by the OIC but by the Group of Arab States led by Tunisia and the call for the special session was supported by several countries across the political spectrum so to speak. 29 affirmatives votes supported the call for a special session including China, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, several members of the GRULAC group that is the Latin American group, and India.
The special session was thereafter held on 5th July and the resolution at the special session was adopted again by 29 votes. These included again China, Russia, most of GRULAC, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Mauritius, Zambia and India. Let me add that we have a traditional position on Palestine that we have followed in international fora. We have also been making official statements from time to time including three in the last 3-4 weeks on our positions on the developments in the Middle East and our voting in the UN Human Rights Council was in keeping with these positions. So I do not see where that item or headline came from.
Question: Can you tell us something about the American diplomat. Was she asked to leave?
Official Spokesman: I am afraid I have no brief on that.
Thank you.
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