Kathmandu: Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has said that civil society has the capacity to vitalise the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in the present South Asian context.

Prime Minister Koirala made this remark while inaugurating the first meeting of the citizen’s commission for South Asia.

Prime Minister Koirala said it is an impressive achievement that the name SAARC has become a part of the South Asian vocabulary, adding that people to people contacts have grown and continue to thrive, regional forums of parliamentarians, judges, lawyers, scholars, businessmen and other professionals have been established and their interaction provide valuable inputs for activities at the official level and have been instrumental in educating the public about the benefits and imperatives of regional cooperation.

The progress of SAARC has been as a open book, he said adding that the ninth SAARC summit has led the organisation along the path of economic cooperation.

Globalisation has inspired us to move ahead to our final goals of building a South Asian Economic Association, he informed adding that another topic energy has been added in the list of cooperation under the economic committee.

Poverty alleviation has commanded high priority in the stated SAARC goals, he said adding that despite all this it has not been possible to formulate a concrete programme of action for the alleviation of poverty at the regional level.

The new millennium can be the harbinger of peace, progress and prosperity in the South Asian region, and this is possible if we work with a determined objective and outlook,he said.

He said we have good potential to minimize the negative impact of rapid globalisation, adding that from cooperation in trade and the economic sector the region can be made more elastic to the vagaries of the poitical situation.

Prime Minister Koirala said we can go ahead despite slackness in SAARC activities at present.

Chairman of the citizen’s commission for South Asian Inder Kumar Gujral said though tension and suspicion prevail in the South Asian region at the political level the people to people relation is cordial.

This is a forum which will try to create opinion in various respects and give a new look to South Asian cooperation, he said.

Joint convenor of the coalition for action on South Asian Cooperation (CASAC) Shreedhar Khatri also spoke on the occasion.