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ECO Free Trade Area 2015: Turkey, Iran Pakistan solidify ties

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ECO Free Trade Area 2015: Turkey, Iran Pakistan solidify ties

ECO Free Trade Area 2015: Turkey, Iran Pakistan solidify ties | Pakistan Patriot

Posted on 24 December 2010

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey...

Premier Erdogan has become one of the most popular leaders in the Muslim world

The Turkish newspapers are all excited about the ECO. The Hurriyat Daily News blares the headlines “Leaders share visions of prosperity, cooperation at Istanbul summit” and captures the sentiments of most Pakistanis.

The new ECO Free Trade Area will change the dynamics of Asia, and bring together separated brothers. Almost all the countries represented in the ECO have share common banners.The crescendo of colors on the national flags represent the new emerging powers of Asia. Turkey is the leading the economic front, while Pakistan is the Nuclear and missile power. Iran and the former CARs are energy rich. All are getting links by roads and rails. This movement is similar to the European integration. First economic and them political. The ECO represents the hopes and the vision of the countries whose populations are young and energetic. In fact Pakistan has one of the youngest populations in the world–full of energy and hope. The transformation of the region has already begun. With the US leaving Afghanistan, all the countries are cooperating to increase trade among themselves.

* President Asif Ali Zardari said on Thursday that Pakistan was well positioned to provide trade and communication corridors through its territory and ports to its friends and partners.
* “Turkey has evolved from an ordinary wing country of the Cold War era toward a central country determining its position on its own,”
* Iran’s solidify ties between the lands of the ancient Silk Road and establish a free-trade zone among the countries by 2015.
* Pakistan has taken a crucial role because it is Pakistan it can provide links to the CARs to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea.
* Pakistan was represented by President Asif Ali Zardari at the ECO summit, which was also attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kazakh PM Karim Massimov, Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva, Tajikistan President Emomali Rehmon, vice president of Turkmenistan Tuvakmammed Caparov and Uzbek Ambassador to Turkey Ulfat Kadirov.

In a brilliant article published in the New York Times, Borzou Daragahi describes the new ECO.

Turkey took over the rotating leadership of a trade organization that includes Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asian states on Thursday in a post that highlights the country’s increasing economic and political clout.

Iran’s newly designated caretaker foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, made his first diplomatic appearance at the 11th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization, or ECO. He joined other envoys and heads of state for a gathering meant to solidify ties between the lands of the ancient Silk Road and establish a free-trade zone among the countries by 2015.

* “We are ready to provide energy as a bridge and develop win-win scenarios,” the president said while addressing the 11th summit of the Economic Coordination Organisation (ECO). He said the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline and TAPI gas pipeline projects should be seen in that context. He described development as a strategic priority and told the ECO member states that infrastructure and energy connectivity in the region should be one of the key goals.
* Zardari said that trade was possible only if there were infrastructural linkages and integrated border arrangements for trade facilitation. He added that one of the major achievements of the ECO was the enforcement of the Transit Transport Framework Agreement (TTFA). The president said that the Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul train service and ECO Truck Caravan were commendable successes.
* He said, “Pakistan remains deeply committed to the aims and objectives of the ECO. The ECO brings us together to renew our partnership for comprehensive regional development and prosperity,” he said, adding, “Our region is blessed with enormous resources and we have vast human capital. We have huge natural resources, including hydrocarbons, minerals, agriculture and technology.” President Zardari as reported in the Daily Times.

The Hurriyat reports ““We are working to achieve regional dialogue and cooperation mechanisms,” Gül said in his opening speech at the summit, adding that these things are crucial for increasing stability and prosperity in the region, as well as creating a more just world order.” In a sentence this is what the ECO is all about. Borzou Daragahi describes the ECO and the Turkish role in it.

“It should be our priority to make the old Silk Road a corridor of energy, trade, communication and transportation to promote the welfare of our respective countries,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul said, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency.

Turkey, Iran and Pakistan founded the ECO a quarter century ago. The trade bloc took on added importance with the addition of newly independent Central Asian states such as energy-rich Azerbaijan as well as Afghanistan in the early 1990s.

Under an ambitious leadership rooted in the country’s Islamist movements, Turkey has since become a regional powerhouse, with an economy ranking in the top 20 worldwide and a growth rate that rivals that of China. It presents itself as a gateway to Central Asia, though initial attempts to draw Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan into its sphere of influence under a pan-Turk banner foundered.

“They’ve turned Istanbul into a major hub,” said Henri Barkey, a Turkey specialist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Turkey has also sought to present itself as a diplomatic broker, seeking to ease tensions between Iran and the West and between Syria and Israel. It is scheduled to host international talks next month on Iran’s nuclear program.

The United States in particular has grown nervous both about what foreign policy analysts have described as Turkey’s lurch eastward and its more ambitious diplomatic endeavors, especially since the rise in the last decade of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials, AKP.

* President Zardari said that the ECO represented the best hope to promote trade and economic linkages in the region and urged the member countries to pool resources to harness their potential. The ECO states have the capacity to collectively address their needs and be masters of their own destiny, he said and added that since its establishment, the organisation had matured and progressed, he added.
* “Vision 2015, developed five years ago, is a pragmatic roadmap and since then the ECO has achieved a lot. However, we still have a long way to go to exploit the true potential of the region,” Zardari said. Trans-regional development and economic integration is the core objective, but for it the functional mechanisms of the ECO needed to be fully operationalised, he said, adding that this included placing ECO Trade Agreement on a fast track.
* Zardari said Afghanistan is an important country in the region and all have a shared responsibility towards it. Pakistan is committed to working closely with the ECO member countries and the international community for stability, peace and development in Afghanistan, he added. “Pakistan has been in the forefront of ECO’s efforts for the reconstruction of Afghanistan,” he said. The president said to realise the dream of creating an ECO free-trade area, all members must operationalise the ECO Trade Agreement. app

“Turkey has evolved from an ordinary wing country of the Cold War era toward a central country determining its position on its own,” said Taha Ozhan, an Istanbul-based analyst at the Foundation for Political and Economic Research, a Turkish think tank close to the government. “Instead of trying to understand Turkey’s recent foreign policy initiatives with concepts like ‘axis shift’ or ‘change of direction,’ one needs to consider them as part of a larger effort to adapt to the transformation process in today’s world order.”

To many regional countries, Turkey plays an enviable balancing act, maintaining warm and commercially beneficial ties with Syria and Iran on one hand while remaining a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, supplying troops to the security force in Afghanistan and seeking to improve a frayed relationship with Israel on the other.

“The diplomats of Turkey are playing the role of old wise tribal leaders in settling the disputes in the region,” said Davoud Hermidas-Bavand, a Tehran-based former Iranian diplomat and professor of international relations. “The star of Turkey in term of politics, economy and culture is shining much more brightly than before.”

But Barkey cautioned not to exaggerate the summit’s significance to Ankara because the organization lumps more economically developed Turkey with authoritarian backwaters such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan and war-ravaged Afghanistan and Pakistan. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” he said. daragahi@latimes.com. Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.

Press TV describes the sentiment in Istanbul “ECO declaration urges regional coop.”.

There is no doubt–”ECO is the Future of Pakistan”. Those who doubt is should read Chaudhry Rehmat Ali’s visionary documents on the subject.
 

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