By Milan Mani Sharma

KATHMANDU, Dec 1 – SAARC is likely to miss yet another deadline to finalise the draft treaty framework on South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) as the sixth round of negotiations on establishing the regional free trade ended inconclusively today.

A joint secretary-level Committee of Experts (CoE) was required to finalise the SAFTA treaty framework prior to the forthcoming ministerial summit to be held in Pakistan in January 2004 as per the 11th SAARC Summit’s directives.”However, the meeting – as much hyped as the last round of negotiations due to little time left for the summit to begin – failed after the developed member nations declined to pledge special preferential treatment to member LDCs,” said a Nepal government source.

Thoroughout the discussion, the LDC members asked the developed countries not to impose any antidumping and safeguarding measures on any of their products.

They also clung to the stand of not listing LDCs’ products in the negative list. “But the developed partners refused to pledge such facilities,” the source added.He further informed that the draft treaty of the SAFTA framework developed so far would now be forwarded to the standing committee, a body of SAARC foreign secretaries, and the ministerial council for further proceedings.

“The CoE, nonetheless, has left open the possibility of holding negotiations on the outstanding issues just prior to the summit in Islamabad,” the source said. But that seems very unlikely, he added.

“Now it is upto the standing committee and the ministerial council to decide what and how the spirit of establishing regional free trade area is to be proceeded,” said the source.