We, the media-persons and experts from the countries of South Asia, having benefited from the well-researched papers in our deliberations on most aspects and major areas of cooperation in our region at the South Asian Free Media Association's (SAFMA) Conference on Regional Cooperation on August 20-21, at Dhaka, Bangladesh, have agreed to promote mutually beneficial cooperation and arrived at the following guidelines for our persuasion:

Appreciating some forward movement towards creating a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA), the agreement on the Social Charter and endorsement of the report by the Independent Commission for Poverty Alleviation in South Asia (ISACPA) by the 12th SAARC Summit and the progress being made in the negotiation in four areas with reference to the Framework Agreement for SAFTA and the positive environment created for regional cooperation with the resumption of the Composite Dialogue between India and Pakistan;

Expressing our grief over the havoc wrought by the floods in South Asia, especially Bangladesh and parts of India and Nepal, even as some vast regions suffer from drought, causing suffering to hundreds of million people and the environment; Taking note of the initiatives taken by civil society, including SAFMA and other mainstream bodies and the affirmative and creative work done by South Asian scholars, the Group of Eminent Persons in particular, to promote regional cooperation;

Addressing the inaugural session of the conference Foreign Minister of Bangladesh M.Morshed Khan

Concerned about the arrest of the former chairman of the Group of Eminent Persons and others in the Maldives and increasing attacks on the press in the countries of South Asia;

Sharing the aspirations of our people for a better life and collectively to face the challenges posed by globalisation and meeting the demands of the WTO regime though enhanced regional cooperation have agreed to pursue the following guidelines:

1. The SAFTA agreement is only the first stage on the road to deepening cooperation; its effective implementation will depend on the space created for trade, economic collaboration and development across our frontiers. However, if South Asia's economies are to be integrated it will require the development of transnational infrastructure.

2. Trade cooperation would point to monetary cooperation thereby suggesting the need for coordination among central banks. Sustained trading links would require investment, cooperation, both public and private, through joint ventures.

3. The customs Union could lead on to a common exchange rate policy and eventually a common currency underwritten by coordination of macro-economic management across the region.

4. Energy cooperation could evolve into a common energy grid across the region with integrated electricity and gas systems. Transport cooperation would lead to an integrated transport infrastructure which permits for uninterrupted travel from Peshawar to Chittagong and from Kathmandu to Colombo and connecting the abutting regions -- Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, South East Asia and China -- with South Asia.

5. Investment flows would culminate in regional corporations with production facilities located across the region through vertically and horizontally integrated production systems. Shares of both national and regional companies would be quoted on the stock exchanges across the region as capital moves without hindrance across national boundaries to underwrite investment in any part of the South Asia region through a South Asia Development Bank.

6. The regional economic cooperation, investment in transnational physical infrastructure, transportation, communication, energy grid, sharing of water on an equitable and efficient basis and efforts at poverty alleviation would not produce tangible results unless the following criteria are adopted:
a) The concerns of LDCs are genuinely addressed; b) the negative list is kept at the minimum to protect the most vulnerable sectors; c) tariffs are brought down, as agreed, and non-tariff and para-tariff barriers are minimised; d) the economies are gradually opened up to each other with a recourse to investment-trade linkage that takes care of trade deficits between partners through investment flows and capital account; e) vertical and horizontal integration of industries that benefits from relative advantages, economies of scale and provides global competitiveness.

A leading economist of Bangladesh and the chairman of center for Policy Dialogue, Professor Rehman Sobhan presents the Key-note at the unaugural session of the conference

7. To realize such a transformation in the investment climate in each of these countries, preconditions will have to be created to overcome perceptions of political hostility and the attendant security threats will have to be addressed.

8. The proposal for dedicated South Asian Development Fund could also be encouraged. One fund should be dedicated to financing infrastructure and development projects most beneficial to the adjoining regions. A second fund should be established as an Investment Fund, serviced by both public and private capital, to finance private sector investment as well as projects for serving regional markets.

9. The main obstacle to improving connectivity remains political. The prevailing barriers to cross-border movements make neither commercial nor logistical sense and originate in the pathologies of interstate, as well as domestic, politics. The political leaders of South Asia should, therefore, dismantle the political barriers to regional integration.

10. If South Asia's energy scenario were to be re-defined within a regional context, its energy needs would expect to be served through a common distribution system integrated within a single energy grid of power and gas lines extending across and among the abutting regions.

11. As of today, it is the smaller economies who have reduced their tariffs faster than India or Pakistan. However, this is not a problem which can persist over a long period of time due to the WTO rules. It would, therefore, make sense to initiate work on the implications of a Customs Union within South Asia in order to see when, under what circumstances and at what pace such a Union can be created.

12. South Asian nations should look beyond the traditional nations of security and focus on cooperative security; the nation of cooperative security recognises the profound condition of interdependence that binds South Asia and calls on the states of the region to act in their own enlightened self-interest to resolve the current problems facing them through peaceful means.

13. In South Asia, choice is often posed between regional cooperation and conflict resolution. We urge all states to simultaneously move forward to address long-standing political disputes and intensify economic cooperation and people-to-people contact.

14. Beyond cooperative security, South Asian nations must ultimately move towards human security by placing people--their well-being and rights to peaceful life and development--at the centre of security concerns, rather than continuing with the arms race.

15. There is a greater need to allow greater interaction among the policy-makers, parliamentarians, businessmen, media practitioners, professionals, and the leaders of civil society. To enable it to happen, it is necessary that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who have restrictive visa regimes, drastically revise their visa policy and remove impediments to free movement of people.

16. To overcome information deficit about the countries of the region, it is imperative that all restrictions on across to and free flow of information are removed forthwith and media persons and products are allowed free movement across frontiers; the media, on their part, should give special attention to coverage of the countries of South Asia that remain under-reported;

17. Supporting SAFMA's initiative to convene a Conference of South Asian parliamentarians in March 2005, the member countries of SAARC should consider the creation of a South Asian parliament and appoint a commission to study the modalities for such an institution at the 13th SAARC summit;

18. To include the excluded, governments of South Asia take concrete steps to implement the SAARC Social Charter and give priority to poverty alleviation;

19. It is imperative for the South Asian countries to agree to a uniform human rights code and set up institutions under the Paris Principles, and call upon the member countries of SAARC to purposefully set about creating the required mechanisms.

High commissioner of India in Dhaka Veena Sikri says we in SAARC have to embark on something of a crash course in developing regional cooperation in South Asia