ISLAMABAD, June 29: Saarc secretary-general Q.A.M.A. Rahim has underscored the urgent need for regional cooperation in development of telecommunications as an effective approach to poverty alleviation and economic development.

Speaking at the inaugural session of the 2nd Saarc communication ministers' conference here on Tuesday, he reminded the participants that Saarc leaders at their 12th summit held in Islamabad in January had declared poverty alleviation as the overarching goal of all Saarc activities.

He said the South Asia Free Trade Area (Safta) agreement was also signed as a vital step towards that goal for which the role of telecom was crucial. To harness the potentials of ICT (telecommunications and communication technology), Mr Rahim pointed to a number of problems facing the region.

Most important among these is the low telecommunication density and technology gaps among member states, he said. Besides, wide gaps have appeared between urban and rural areas as well as between the richer segment of the population and the poor, he added.

The Saarc secretary-general also called for making the internet services available to most people at affordable cost. Tracing the history of initiatives taken by the member countries for increasing cooperation in telecom, he noted these pre-dated the establishment of Saarc when an integrated programme of action was launched at the first meeting of foreign ministers in New Delhi in 1983.

The latest development was the launch last January of the Regional Integrated Programme of Action under which a new working group on telecommunications, information and communications technology had been created, he added.

He hoped that the creation of this new group would enable the member states to pay focused and dedicated attention on regional cooperation in this field. In his inaugural address, Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, the president's special envoy to the conference, said South Asia faced the real threat of being marginalised if the issues of infrastructure development, regional cooperation, human resource development, intra-regional cooperation and retention of human capital were not addressed on a priority basis.

It is, therefore, imperative that communication infrastructure is developed in such a way as to allow sharing of knowledge and connectivity to the people at large, he said.

He admitted that simultaneous goals of infrastructure expansion and human resource development to international levels of competition were difficult to achieve in view of the current state of affairs.

According to an official press release, the delegates agreed to enhance cooperation among each other for the development of ICT. They also agreed to share information and resources besides exchanging fellowships and training facilities in the telecom discipline.

One of the important tasks of the conference is to formulate a common position of South Asian countries for presentation at the second phase of the world summit on the information society to be held in Tunis in November 2005. In the first phase of the summit held in Geneva in December 2003, the Saarc countries had also presented a common position.