News
Thursday, June 24, 2010
SAARC interior ministers’ moot startsBy Tahir Niaz
ISLAMABAD: The third meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional cooperation (SAARC) ministers of interior started on Wednesday.
Technical sessions of the SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk (SDOMD) and the SAARC Terrorism Offences Monitoring Desk (STOMD) were held on the first day of the moot.
The Anti-Narcotics Force director general presided over the SDOMD meeting, while the Crisis Management Cell director general chaired the STOMD meeting. During the deliberations, the officials of SAARC countries finalised and adopted reports for the ministerial level meetings.
Sources told Daily Times that the meeting discussed at length the matters relating to strengthening both the desks and recommended measures to further improve their functioning. The objectives of the STOMD include analysing and disseminating information on terrorist offences, tactics, strategies and methods, while the SDOMD objectives are to analyse and disseminate information on drug-related offences in the region.
The sources said the focal point agreed upon was that terrorism was a big challenge to all states and a threat to humanity, and could not be justified on any grounds. They also agreed to strengthen cooperation in this area. Today’s (Thursday) agenda of the meeting of the SAARC ministers of interior include the meeting of SAARC immigration authorities and the eighth SAARC Conference on Cooperation in Police Matter. The SAARC Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (MACM) was signed during the Fifteenth SAARC Summit in Colombo in August 2008.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk