Sri Lanka's initiative in regional co-operation in the Indian Ocean , hailed in the 1970s, seems to be slipping. In a recent election to the chairmanship of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, Sri Lanka lost to the Seychelles. Earlier, in 1995, Mauritius, with India's blessings and support, had proposed a new association of countries of the Indian Ocean Rim. The first meeting to discuss the proposal was attended by seven countries: Oman, Mauritius, South Africa, India, Australia, Kenya and Singapore.
Sri Lanka, whose interest in the Indian Ocean Region is well known, was excluded from the new Indian Ocean Club. Sri Lanka was admitted to the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Co-operation (IORARC) only after representations were made to some of the sponsors at ministerial level. Sri Lanka, along with six other countries, was admitted and participated in the first inter-governmental meeting of the expanded IORARC of fourteen countries in September 1996.
The formal launching of the new organization is scheduled for March 1997. A significant omission among the participating countries is Pakistan. It is inconceivable that the second largest state in South Asia, strategically situated and with an undoubted interest in Indian Ocean affairs should be kept out. This certainly would not be "In the spirit of SAARC".
The long-term goal of the IORARC is economic co-operation on a wide basis: the promotion of intra-regional trade encouraging the flow of goods, services, investment and technology within the region. The non-military aspects of security are also being urged for attention by the sponsors of IORARC: drug trafficking, arms peddling, illegal migration, health issues like epidemics and pandemics, money laundering and black money, terrorism, separatist movements and fishing and mineral rights.
Because of great diversity of the coastal state of the Indian Ocean, the sponsors of the IORARC envisage a modular approach with the aim of building an Indian Ocean Rim economic group. They are expecting to do this first through sub-regional groupings, followed by linkages through selected countries from different parts of the region, and building from more limited objectives to more complex and difficult ones.
The community
The Indian Ocean Rim defines a distinctive area in international politics consisting of coastal state bordering the Indian Ocean, including some thirty-six nations of Africa and Asia and the continent of Australia, it is an area of great economic promise where one-third of the world's population live with an estimated income of US $317 million. It contains two-thirds of the world's oil resources, a fifth of its arable land and vast mineral resources.
It is a region of much diversity - in culture, race, religion, economic standards, and strategic interests. The countries vary in the size of their populations, economies, trade, technology development and in the composition of their GDP. Agreement on any one issue is difficult and time-consuming, if indeed it is at all possible. A number of distinct sub-regions are evident. For example: Southern and Eastern Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, South Asia , South-east Asia and Australia.
Some sub-regional entities are already in place, for example, ASEAN and the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) are functioning well. Other sub-regional groups like SAPTA (South Asian Preferential Trade Association) and SADEC (South African Development Community) need to be invigorated. New sub-regional linkages may be formed within and between these broader groupings. Blocks of sub-regional modules can then be linked.
A zone of peace
Two and a half decades ago , in 1971, Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike sponsored a resolution in the UN General Assembly declaring the Indian Ocean "Within limits to be determined, together with the air space above and the ocean floor subjacent thereto..... for all time.... a zone of peace".
The objective was clearly to urge the Great Powers to dismantle their military installations, including nuclear weapons, from bases in the Indian Ocean and to provide peaceful navigation through the Indian Ocean for ships of all countries.
In recognition of Sri Lanka's initiative and interest in maintaining peace and stability in the Indian Ocean region, the General Assembly decided to arrange a Conference in Colombo to devise ways and means of implementing the objectives of the Declaration. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 aggravated the security situation in the Indian Ocean region and delayed the holding of the Colombo Conference.
A curious situation followed in the ensuing years. The Western powers and India, for quite different reasons, adopted tactics which slowed down the work of the General Assembly's Ad Hoc Committee, chaired by Sri Lanka. Interminable discussions were held in drafting an agenda and the rules of procedure for the Colombo Conference.
Finally, in the late 1980s, the Western powers and Japan withdrew from the Ad Hoc Committee stating that in presenting a majority report to the First Committee, the principle of consensus had been breached.
Thereafter India stalled the holding of the Colombo Conference arguing that such a Conference without the participation of the great powers and the major maritime users of the Indian Ocean, in Colombo would be meaningless.
Sri Lanka and the other countries represented in the Ad Hoc Committee, except India, tried to keep afloat the concept of peace and stability in the Indian Ocean region by trying to veer the Committee's work from the military to the non-military aspects of security.
It was really a hopeless task. India was not interested, unless the great powers also participated.
Co-operation
After World War II, the decolonization process ended British hegemony in the Indian Ocean. Superpower competition began to escalate. The Indian Ocean became a strategic area of importance to both superpowers, the USA and the USSR. Besides the superpowers, France, Britain, Japan and China have substantial interests in the Indian Ocean region. Reunion, near Mauritius, and the island of Mayotte in the Comoros are administratively parts of France. Britain has a range of political, economic and strategic concerns in the region. The British-owned base of Diego Garcia has been used by the US to project American power into the Indian Ocean.
The common historical experience of European imperialism engenders among leaders of states in the Indian Ocean region, a sense of shared identity.
Even before the age of imperialism, the Indian Ocean itself had become a medium of contact, of movement, of exchange, bringing together peoples and cultures that otherwise would have remained isolated from each other.
It is time that this sense of shared identity was translated into greater and more fruitful co-operation in the interest of the coastal and hinterland states of the Indian Ocean region.
There is room for existing institutions and mechanisms as well as for new ones for promoting such co-operation. The co-operative arrangements already existing in the region need not be displaced by the Indian Ocean Rim Initiative
Return to the Editorial/Opinion contents page