17th SAARC Summit in Maldives ends, 18th SAARC Summit in Nepal

The two-day 17th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) begun on November 10 ended in Addu City of Maldives on Friday, issuing 20 points ‘Addu Declaration’ on the theme of “building bridges”.

All the eight member states signed four agreements in the course of the regional meet. The agreements signed are SAARC Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disasters, the SAARC Seed Bank Agreement, the SAARC Agreement on Multilateral Arrangement on Recognition of Conformity Assessment and the SAARC Agreement on Implementation Regional Standards.

The summit also took up the issue of environmental degradation and adopted a declaration to implement existing commitments to combat climate change.

China, America, Japan, Australia, Iran, South Korea, Mauritius, Myanmar, and the European Union have observer status in the SAARC and their representatives also addressed the concluding session of the summit Friday evening.

Meanwhile, the SAARC Summit accepted Nepal´s offer to hold the next SAARC Summit, 18^th Saarc Summit in Nepal in 2013. SAARC Summit is held in every two years.