Sheel Kant Sharma

Dec 08, 2010

Saarc: Search for value addition

The emerging geopolitics of Asia envisages greater role for South Asian regionalism in strategic terms. The region seems to hold the key to stability in Asia and beyond. This larger context should not be missed in evaluating the recent 17th Saarc Summit in Maldives and assessing the Asean and East Asia Summit meetings in Bali. The Maldives summit also proved the considerable default value of Saarc as an institution once again.

Don’t hit N-button

A nuclear accident anywhere is an accident everywhere — this maxim has been central to nuclear safety in the years since Chernobyl.
It seems that once again all the labours of the scientists and engineers who sought to usher in a nuclear renaissance are turning Sisyphean in the wake of Japan’s tragic ordeal. Japan’s nuclear catastrophe, with unprecedented scenes of virtual “parlay” in city after coastal city in the country’s north-east areas, is drawing sharper and narrower international focus by the day.

Saarc focus should be people, not security

When the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) was established in the mid-Eighties, Cold War tensions were high, but in the East-West context the buzz about “security and cooperation” was getting louder following the Helsinki process, albeit with a greater accent on “security”. The Saarc Charter of 1985, on the other hand, eschews any mention of that word.