Security issues may cloud trade agenda at SAARC summit

By Krittivas Mukherjee

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Leaders of South Asia, home to a fifth of humanity, meet this weekend at a summit aiming to boost trade and reduce poverty but a wave of deadly bombings in India, its biggest member, means terrorism could dominate the agenda.

Formed more than 20 years ago to foster economic development in one of the world's poorest regions, old rivalries among members have blocked any meaningful progress for the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC.

SAARC summits are often little more than a backdrop to the bilateral meeting between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.

Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Afghanistan make up the rest of SAARC.

The Aug. 2-3 heads of state summit in Sri Lanka will be held under the shadow of a string of bomb blasts in India, and another at its embassy in Kabul last month, which India blamed on Pakistan's spy agency. The attacks together killed more than 100 people.

"Terrorism is an elephant in the drawing room," C. Uday Bhaskar, New Delhi-based foreign policy analyst, told Reuters.

"It is a major challenge for the region and it will be very odd if the countries meet and don't discuss it."

The summit is also being held a country fighting a 25-year civil war, now in a decisive stage, with the government pursuing a strategy to gradually retake rebel stronghold samid an almost daily barrage of land, sea and air attacks. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.