KATHMANDU, Jan 3: South Asian leaders meeting in Nepal are set to put off their ambitious plans to turn the region into a free trade area amid political bickering that has stalled the negotiations.

The seven countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) were due to adopt a framework treaty on a European Union style economic integration last year, but it is now being put off until the end of 2002.

“The council of ministers at a meeting on Tuesday decided to have the framework treaty by the end of 2002,” said the outgoing head of the Saarc council of ministers, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando.

Saarc had originally decided to adopt the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) by 2005, but a summit in the Maldives optimistically advanced the date to 2001.

Officials here said Saarc has even failed to conclude the final round of talks on a Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) which should have been in place by 1997.

Fernando said there was no disagreement on putting off the dates for the Free Trade Agreement, but the grouping was discussing new ways to tackle the problem of poverty.

He said Saarc was also working towards developing common positions at negotiations with the World Trade Organization.

The seven Saarc countries together have a population of 1.3 billion people, or just over a fifth of humanity. It is considered the world’s poorest region.

The main reason for the slow progress in trade and economic cooperation within the grouping is squabbling between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan — the two big members of Saarc who have overshadowed the association since its first summit in 1985.

At the ninth summit in the Maldives in May 1997, both India and Pakistan committed themselves to dismantling trade barriers in a bid to jump start the struggling regional economies.

Pakistan’s then foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan said they could not be the “ostrich of South Asia.”

Talks between India and Pakistan over Kashmir alone will boost economic activity in the region and “unleash the latent potential of South Asia,” he had said.

But a year later, India and Pakistan carried out tit-for-tat nuclear test explosions, dealing another blow to the Saarc process.—AFP