"Reflecting on the success of our community forestry program for income generation, we proposed a complete new agenda," he said, emphasizing that there is need to replicate the forest program in SAARC nations.Discussions about SAARC University, SAARC Development Fund, SAARC Arbitration Council and South Asian Regional Standard Organization were the major agenda during the first two days of the meeting attended by the joint-secretaries of the SAARC nations.
In addition to these four agenda, issues of agriculture, veterinary, and seed bank were also discussed in the meetings that began on Monday. Likewise, the participant foreign joint-secretaries from SAARC nations also discussed on terrorism, drug trade and exchange of information system, joint secretary Bhattarai added.
The 37th Foreign Ministerial Meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations is being held at Pokhara Grand Hospital in Pokhara. Following the joint-secretary level meetings on Tuesday, a secretary-level meeting will take place on Wednesday. Thursday will see the foreign minister-level meeting, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
Foreign ministers Kamal Thapa of Nepal, Sushma Swaraj of India, Dunya Maumoon of the Maldives, Mangala Pinsiri Samaraweera of Sri Lanka, Abadul Ahsan Mohammad Ali of Bangladesh, Damcho Dorji of Bhutan, Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Hekmat Khalil Karzai and foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz at Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs will attend the foreign minister-level meeting.
According to Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tara Prasad Pokharel, the SAARC-level meeting will review the agenda of the last SAARC Summit held in Kathmandu, that had concluded with '36-point Kathmandu declaration'. SAFTA and trade facilitation, connectivity, combating terrorism, trans-national crimes and strengthening the SAARC processes were key issues among the 36-point Kathmandu Declaration 2014.
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