ISLAMABAD, Feb 27: President Pervez Musharraf will inaugurate the second three-day Saarc Information Ministers’ Conference here on March 7.

The ministry of information and media development is giving final touches to arrangements for the conference being held as a follow-up of the first South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Information Ministers’ Conference held in Dhaka in April, 1998.

According to official sources, the agenda for the conference will be information and communication technology, identification of new steps for strengthening cooperation in the field of information and media, including developing appropriate software for information infra-structure of Saarc functional cooperation, etc.

The delegations will start arriving on March 6.

According to the schedule, the senior officials’ meeting will be presided over by Federal Information Secretary Syed Anwar Mahmood, while the concluding remarks are to be made by the Nepalese information minister. Nepal is the current chairman of Saarc, which consist of the seven countries of the region.

Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have confirmed their participation in the conference while response from Bangladesh and the Maldives is still awaited.

Organizers said that the agenda also included the matter of deciding methodology for publicity and projection of Saarc activities within and outside the region and evolving a common stand of Saarc for projection at the world summit of the information society to be held in Switzerland in 2003.—APP