16 January 2005	Sunday	05 Zilhaj 1425

PESHAWAR, Jan 15: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation can become a more viable forum for integration if it follows the European Union's model based on the principles of democratization , power sharing and better polity among its member states, the chairperson of the Office for European Integration and Regional Cooperation said on Saturday.

Ulla Kalbfleisch Kottsieper Kako, who is also the chief of the regional committee of the EU in Brussels, was delivering a lecture on 'Institutional pre-requisites for regional integration: experience of the EU and lessons for Saarc regions' at the Area Study Centre in the Peshawar University.

She said Europe did not want to give lessons to people and institutions of the world but to share its experience with the rest of the world for a dignified and peaceful future of humanity.

She said there was a condition in various European Union documents that the states intending to become its member must first keep in order their homes. She said the full members of the EU had fully established better polity and expanded democratization in all sectors and their constitutions had incorporated supreme human values. She added the EU stood on such values.