ISLAMABAD, April 9: India has decided to support President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s proposal to make South Asia a free trade zone for promoting cooperation among the Saarc member states.

“We fully endorse your president’s proposal to make South Asia a free trade zone as it will benefit our countries,” said India’s Deputy Chairman Planning Commission K.C. Pant.

Talking to reporters here on Tuesday at the end of the 2-day third meeting of the Saarc finance and planning ministers, he said it was a good idea to move from South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement to South Asian Free Trade Agreement for the good of the people of the region.

Mr Pant said the third Saarc ministerial meeting helped find various solutions for removing massive poverty from the region.

He said, there were no bilateral talks as Saarc was a regional forum in which discussions could take place only on regional matters.

He said Saarc charter did not allow raising bilateral issues. He did not believe that there could be no progress on economic front in the presence of tension between Pakistan and India.

“I think we have made a lot of progress in the Islamabad meeting,” he said, adding that a plan of action would go a long way in addressing the problem of poverty.

In his statement made during the conference, he said time had now come for “us to reflect upon the role that Saarc as a forum can and should play in accelerating the pace of poverty-reduction in our region”.

“No matter, how valuable the process of exchange of ideas and experience has been, there is a limit to which it can carry us. All the primary responsibility for devising suitable strategies for poverty eradication and their implementation vests in national governments, which have to take account of specificities of their countries in designing suitable interventions,” he believed.