By IANS
New Delhi : Approval of a convention on mutual legal assistance on criminal matters will be among the top priorities at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) home ministers’ conference that begins here Tuesday.
India had circulated a draft convention before the Saarc summit in April this year. Though there had been objections from Pakistan and Bangladesh initially, the summit declaration had noted that there was “a need for law enforcement authorities of member states to enhance cooperation in the prevention, suppression and prosecution of offences” and talked about taking further India’s draft on the subject.
The context of the inclusion at that time was that India, with strong support from Sri Lanka, wanted the New Delhi summit to take a strong position against terrorism, especially the channelling of terror funds and its links to smugglings of narcotics.
Last month, there had been a technical meeting of legal advisers in Sri Lanka to discuss the draft convention as a precursor to the second meeting of the Saarc home ministers that will round up the conference Oct 25.
According to officials, the Indian draft was based on UN models and also the Harare Scheme. The latter is a scheme on mutual assistance in criminal matters between commonwealth countries.
However, some issues that came to the fore during the meeting in Sri Lanka need to be ironed out, officials said.
“For example, Nepal had said that the treaty would cover offences that occur after it is signed. But we argued that only the request for assistance has to come after the treaty is in force, the date of the offence does not matter,” said a senior government official.
The main cause of trepidation in some capitals is over sharing financial information. “The issue of bank secrecy always creates problems, with some countries worried about disclosing data on financial transactions that could help in tracking terror funds,” said the official.
Interestingly, media reports from Bangladesh suggest that it will be strongly pushing for finalising the convention on mutual legal assistance — a u-turn from its earlier concerns on the subject.
The country’s officials said that signing the convention would facilitate the deportation of several hundred Bangladeshi criminals who had fled across the border to India.
In fact, it is expected that Bangladesh will hand over a list of about 600 criminals to India on the sidelines of the meetings this week. Similarly, India is also expected to raise the matter of United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) chief Anup Chetia who is reported to be in Bangladesh.
Indian officials said that most of the language of the treaty had been agreed upon. “I think it will take only one or two meetings to finalise it once we get directions from the meeting of the home ministers,” said a senior Ministry of External Affairs official.
The ministers are also expected to discuss the proposal for a nodal police organisation, Saarcpol, along the lines of Interpol and establishment of a Saarc immigration authority.