New Southeast Asia Group Avoids Nuclear Arms Issue

The first meeting of the seven-nation South Asian Assn. for Regional Cooperation concluded Sunday with leaders failing to discuss the most controversial issue in the 1-billion population territory: the nuclear race between India and Pakistan.

“We did not want to bring this radioactive material into SAARC (the new group),” Bangladesh President Hussain Mohammed Ershad said in a press conference at the end of the two-day inaugural session of the world’s newest and most populous regional cooperation bloc. “Therefore we did not discuss any nuclear issues.”

Ershad is the first chairman of the association, composed of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.

After cruising the Bangladesh river system together in a sidewheel paddleboat Sunday morning, the seven leaders appeared briefly in the National Assembly building here to adopt a charter for the organization.

The leaders--two hereditary monarchs, two presidents, two generals and a prime minister--also agreed on 11 general areas of cooperation, ranging from rural development, population control and agriculture to technology, telecommunications and sports.

Two new subject, terrorism and drug trafficking and abuse, were added to the organization’s long-term agenda.

The issue of terrorism poses a potential conflict among several of the countries in the new group. Except for Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist mountain kingdom, and the Maldives, a remote Indian Ocean island chain, every country in the group has some internal terrorist threat.

Also, India has accused Pakistan of harboring Sikh terrorists while Sri Lanka has accused India of harboring Tamil separatists.

However, the leaders steered clear of such controversial issues in the sensitive early life of the organization, which was five years in the making after it was suggested by former Bangladesh leader Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated here in 1981.

“As a matter of fact, there was no accusation at all by one country against another country,” Ershad said. “We were brothers today.”

The most glaring omission in the meeting was the intensifying nuclear race between India and Pakistan. In recent months, India has threatened to begin a nuclear weapons program if Pakistan does not halt what Indian officials assert is a nearly completed project to build a Pakistani nuclear weapon.

India detonated a nuclear explosive device in the Rajasthan desert in 1974 but says it has not since then developed a nuclear arsenal.

Although the regional nuclear issue was raised Saturday by Bhutanese King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who lamented the “increasing possibility of the development of nuclear weapons,” it was not picked up by the other leaders Sunday.

However, in the informal gatherings and cocktail parties in the main hotels here, the nuclear issue was the main topic of conversation.