Isolated by India, Pakistan plays with ‘bigger SAARC’ idea
In the wake of the Uri terror strike, India announced its decision not to participate in the SAARC summit which was supposed to be held in Pakistan in November this year. All other SAARC nations followed suit, and decided to boycott the summit. Distressed by this marginalisation and mainly due to India’s increasing influence in the SAARC, Pakistan is now playing with the idea of a greater SAARC. According to a recent report in the Dawn newspaper, Pakistan is looking at the possibility of a “bigger SAARC” to check India’s increasing dominance in the eight-member forum.
According to the report, “Pakistan has pitched the idea of a greater South Asian economic alliance, one that includes China, Iran, and some neighboring Central Asian countries”. A parliamentary delegation from Pakistan during its five-day visit to Washington last week pitched this idea, the report said. “A greater South Asia is already emerging,” Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed was quoted as saying in one of his interactions with the media. “This greater South Asia includes China,Iran, and the neighboring Central Asian republics,” he said. He described the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as the key economic route linking South Asia with Central Asia.
Behind India’s BIMSTEC-BRICS gamble: How to isolate Pakistan
Marking the near complete isolation of Pakistan in the region, terrorism is set to dominate the agenda of dual summits of BRICS and BIMSTEC countries India is hosting in Goa October 15-16.
With Pakistan showing no sign of abandoning terrorism as an instrument of state policy, the overarching focus of India will be to get both BRICS and BIMSTEC groupings to back a collective approach to combating the scourge. India will be pressing these groupings to support a non-segmented approach to terror, which is necessary in view of the propensity of some countries to portray terrorists as freedom fighters, as Pakistan has done in the case of militants active in Kashmir.