ISLAMABAD, Dec 30: The Saarc standing committee of foreign secretaries will start negotiations here on Wednesday to develop consensus on the four main issues for finalizing the proposed draft South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) framework treaty.

An official source told Dawn on Tuesday that foreign secretaries of the seven Saarc-member countries during the two-day meeting would go through the remaining issues for seeking its possible solution before the treaty was finalized.

Following this meeting, the official said the draft would be discussed in the counsel of ministers’ meeting of Saarc member countries scheduled for January 2-3 to finalize the agreement for signing before it was taken up in the summit.

It may be added that the Saarc special meeting of the Committee on Economic Cooperation (CEC) had failed recently to develop consensus on four major areas for finalizing the proposed draft SAFTA framework treaty.

The areas, the official said where consensus needs to be reached include anti-dumping issues, countervailing duties and safeguard measures; selection of items for the sensitive lists and the implementation period for the least developed countries (LDCs) for bringing down their tariffs.

The LDCs were asking for more time for the implementation of the proposed treaty. Similarly, they wanted that their products should not be subjected to the anti-dumping duty, safeguard duty and countervailing measures in the markets of developing countries — Pakistan and India.