Economics and trade should take predence over politics: Sinha

Shimla, Jun 3 (UNI) Former external affairs minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha today said economic growth and trade should take predence over politics, while pushing issues of conflict to the background.

Addressing the concluding session of the two-day conference ''Towards South Asian Unity'', organised by the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) here, he said the SAARC Parliamentarians need to focus on areas of similarities and push issues of conflict to background.

Mr Singh said economic growth and trade should take precedence and politics should not be allowed to hamper the process of regional cooperation. ''Let the simple logic of mutual economic benefit triumph over politics.'' The growth in trade and economic areas would create space for resolving political issues also, he said.

The BJP leader said he did not share the view that SAARC would not progress unless Indo-Pak conflicts were resolved and asserted that once progress was made in other areas, the differences on contentious issues would narrow down.

Regretting the decision taken by SAARC countries on SAFTA had not made desired progress, he said Pakistan did not take desired steps in this direction.

The former union minister said the main problem was ''trust deficit'' and unless efforts were made to make up for this deficit, desired progress would not be achieved.

The intra-regional trade among ASEAN was over 40 per cent of the region's total trade and it was disappointing that SAARC's share in he trade was only five per cent, he said.

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