Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will leave on a four-day visit to the Maldives on Wednesday to attend the 17th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) Summit.
Singh will be accompanied by external affairs minister S M Krishna, national security advisor Shivshankar Menon, foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai and other senior officials during the two-day summit at Addu Islands.
The theme of this Saarc Summit is ?Building Bridges?, which focuses on improvement in trade, connectivity and people-to-people contacts among the member nations.
Four important agreements are expected to be inked during the summit, including two on regional standards, one to establish a rapid response mechanism to deal with natural disasters, and another to establish a Saarc Seed Bank.
On the sidelines, Singh and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina will hold talks to review bilateral projects, especially the ones identified under the $1-billion line of credit India had pledged to Bangladesh during Hasina’s visit to New Delhi in 2010. The stalled Teesta water-sharing accord may also figure in the discussions.
Briefing mediapersons ahead of the Prime Minister?s visit, foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai, however, struck an ambivalent note when asked whether the Teesta accord would figure in the discussions. ?Inevitably we would discuss any unfinished business from the PM?s visit. I do not think we would be going into the specific details of the individual agreements,? he said.
Besides Hasina, Singh is expected to meet the leaders of all other Saarc countries, including Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, on November 11. The issue of action against the perpetrators of the 26/11 attacks is expected to come up during the Singh-Gilani meeting.
Responding to a question, Mathai said there were indications of forward movement in Indo-Pak ties. In this connection, he also referred to Pakistan’s move to grant most-favoured nation status to India.
Singh’s visit to Male is also expected to give fresh momentum to India’s relations with its close and strategic neighbour in the Indian Ocean. The last visit by the Indian PM to the Maldives was in September 2002. Singh will also address Majlis, the parliament of Maldives.
China pitches in with CCTVs
Recognising the limitations faced by this tiny island country in hosting a summit of this proportions, the participants have decided to provide physical and technical support to the Maldives. While China, which is attending the summit as an observer country, is providing cars, CCTV systems and office items for the meet, India is sending a police team.
Sri Lanka will provide security from its Special Task Force units trained in counter-terrorism operations. Bangladesh has donated trucks for the meet, while equipment worth around $400,000 have arrived from Pakistan.