'Encourage free flow of media, ideas among SAARC'

New Delhi, Feb 9: Debunking assertions that SAARC had not achievedmuch since its inception, India today called for emulating internet andmusic by treating borders as places for free flow of ideas andinteraction and not as limits in the military sense.

Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, addressing SAARC Editorshere, also said SAARC nations were inter-dependent irrespective of theasymmetries of power, shape, size.

''We are not what we were 40-50 years ago. We today have thecapacities and the potential to do things together which we did nothave before...We realise the extent of our inter-dependence, the extentto which we need each other... This has nothing to do with asymmetriesof power, shape, size and whatever. We all need each other. India needsa peaceful periphery if we are to achieve our own goals for ourselves.It is in our self-interest to work with the rest of South Asia...Youlook at the music industry, what the internet has done to the musicindustry. I don't think that there is any part of our lives where youdon't see this,'' the Foreign Secretary said in his inaugural addressat the Conference being organised for the first time.

Emphasising the ''connectivity of the mind and ideas,'' he saidthe role of mediapersons and editors was crucial in bringing about thetransformation.

''We have traditionally, I think, looked at borders as limits, asplaces in a military sense, in a security sense. Whereas, if you lookat it civilisationally, traditionally borders are zones where nations,where cultures, where civilisations interact and it is only when we useborders in that sense--where ideas flow freely across thoseborders...'' He called for attaching importance to the free movement ofmedia persons and media products, encourage the free flow of ideas asthe flow of ideas had been much more limited and regretted the''deficit'' in thinking saying there had seldom been direct contactbetween the media in SAARC countries.

UNI>