By IANS
Dhaka : Experts of eight South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) member nations will meet in Colombo Monday to examine an India-prepared draft for a regional anti-terrorism pact.
Home/interior ministers of the member nations – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives – are scheduled to meet in New Delhi on Oct 26 to sign the pact that would be finalized a day earlier by the home/interior secretaries.
Saarc member nations lack bilateral mechanism for cooperation in this area and a regional pact is seen as a first and a necessity since a significant part of the global phenomenon emanates from this region.
The regional anti-terrorism agreement will provide them with a legal basis for devising a common strategy to tackle the global scourge, New Age newspaper said Sunday.
The agenda for the experts’ meeting in Colombo for three days will be regional security concerns and transnational crimes, it said. The meeting of the legal advisers, the expert body, will weigh the pros and cons of the draft and is likely to finalise it in the Colombo meeting.
“The proposed agreement styled ‘SAARC convention on mutual assistance in criminal matters’ will lay the foundation for enhancing the member-countries’ cooperation in addressing criminal matters through a legal framework,” a Bangladesh foreign ministry official said.
“There have been three earlier conventions on the same subject, but this one will be completely different and the most effective for addressing all sorts of terrorism,” the official added.
The draft prepared by India suggests cooperation in uprooting the root causes of crimes by making detained persons available to assist investigations, taking measures to locate, restrain or seize the proceeds and instruments of crime, and taking necessary measures to locate, freeze and confiscate any funds meant for the financing acts of terrorism in the territory of SAARC nations.
It also suggested mutual assistance for locating and identifying persons and objects associated with terrorism, providing information, searching and seizing terrorists and arms, and taking and obtaining evidence of criminality.
The draft notes that since the SAARC member-states do not have bilateral agreements on mutual assistance in criminal matters it would be significant and very important for the SAARC countries to negotiate a convention on mutual assistance in criminal matters.