Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday said as a founding member, Pakistan had been and would remain at the forefront of shaping the ECO’s agenda as coordinated and collective efforts could realize the true potential of the region.
“We have full faith in the bright future of ECO. We shall leave no stone unturned in assisting in ensuring ECO’s realization. We ask ECO member states to closely coordinate their policies to minimize the adverse impact of the current global economic crisis,” Bilawal said while addressing the 26th ECO Council of Ministers in Tashkent.
The foreign minister said Pakistan wished to see the ECO region transform into a prosperous trading organization that stimulated and promoted industrial growth and eventually eliminated tariff and non-tariff hurdles to promote free trade within the region and become a factor of stability, global peace, and prosperity.
“Let us recall our commitment to make ECO an organization, not just of commitments, but implementation; not just of words but of action, a bloc where we could proudly pass the baton to future generations without any remorse or regrets, as an organization where every year is celebrated as the ‘Year of Strengthening Connectivity.'”
ECO to strengthen ties among member states
Felicitating Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov on the assumption of the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto said Pakistan viewed the ECO as an essential platform in the region and to strengthen relations among the member states.
“ECO was founded amid high hopes and great ambitions. The Treaty of Izmir envisaged a closely-knit fraternity of member states in an integrated, prosperous, and interconnected region. A region integrated through means of infrastructure, free trade, energy connectivity and collective well-being of the region’s inhabitants.”
Bilawal called for realizing the objectives of the Treaty of Izmir and harnessing the ECO’s full potential. He emphasized that contemporary times presented opportunities and challenges, and these opportunities and challenges could best be tackled through a holistic approach.
“We are gathering at a time of profound global transformation and challenges, from an international economic recession due to post-COVID aftershocks challenging the foundations of world economic and financial architecture to the specter of Islamophobia, extremism, militancy, and terrorism. Natural disasters, poverty, and climate change affect today, and unfortunately, ECO countries are at the heart of these cataclysmic phenomena,” he remarked.
FM Bilawal said the impacts of the floods had emerged as the biggest emergency in Pakistan, not the COVID pandemic.
According to the World Bank (WB), Pakistan had lost some $30 billion due to the floods, and its urgent priority was to ensure rapid economic growth and lift millions out of deprivation and hunger, he added.
FM Bilawal welcomed the proposal of the Republic of Uzbekistan for the establishment of a High-Level Dialogue Platform on Environmental Cooperation within the framework of the ECO organization, calling it a “very opportune and sagacious” decision to take a collective approach to address the challenges that concerned all the ECO members and the region.
He said the ECO region, comprising 8 million square kilometers and half a billion population – roughly 15% of the world population, carried a share of only 2.2 % in global trade. Moreover, the intra-regional trade, less than 8% of the region’s aggregate, was in stark contrast to other regional groupings, such as the European Union, where the intra-regional trade stood above 70%.
He said connectivity through the development of road and rail projects, liberalization of visa regimes, and simplification of border procedures would not only address the intra-regional requirements of energy and enhance intra-regional trade but also enable the ECO members to act as a bridge and create mutual inter-dependencies.
The foreign minister told the gathering that Pakistan, a victim of terrorism, reiterated the desire to see peace taking root in Afghanistan, which had suffered for decades due to war and instability.
