Friday 3 March 2017

Pakistan Welcome ECO Head of States!

Many knew that Chaudhry Rehmat Ali proposed name Pakistan for an independent state for Muslims in India. Pamphlet known as now or Never was supposed to be the document suggesting the Proposal. However, it was not simply a Pamphlet but a thorough thought behind suggesting Pakistan as the name for a dream country. Chaudhry Rehmat Ali wrote books on the same subject with detailed historical background and suggested proposal for the new state.
The name Pakistan as he suggested, indicating P for Punjab, A for Afhania, K for Kashmir, S for Sindh and ‘Tan’ was for all surrounding Tans like Baluchistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan etc.
The idea was to build independent state Pakistan for Muslim majority areas of India and then have confederation of the same with adjacent Muslim Majority Countries.
Today, Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is like the reality for the same dream. Though not bind to any kind of confederation by mutual interests, economical situation, geographical link and cultural back ground bringing these countries closer to each other.
The Economic Cooperation Organisation or ECO is a Eurasian political and economic intergovernmental organization which was founded in 1985 in Tehran by the leaders of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. It provides a platform to discuss ways to improve development and promote trade and investment opportunities. The ECO is an ad hoc organisation under the United Nations Charter. The objective is to establish a single market for goods and services, much like the European Union.ECO's secretariat and cultural department are located in Iran, its economic bureau is in Turkey and its scientific bureau is situated in Pakistan.

The nature of ECO is that it consists of predominantly Muslim-majority states as it is a trading bloc for the Central Asian states connected to the Mediterranean through Turkey, to the Persian Gulf via Iran, and to the Arabian sea via Pakistan. The current framework of ECO expresses itself mostly in the form of bilateral agreements and arbitration mechanisms between individual and fully sovereign member states. This makes ECO similar to ASEAN in that it is an organisation that has its own offices and bureaucracy for implementation of trade amongst sovereign member states.

This consists of the historically integrated agricultural region of the Ferghana Valley which allows for trade and common agricultural production in the border region of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Free trade agreements between the industrial nations of Iran and Turkey are due to be signed in 2017.[3] Likewise the Pakistan-Turkey Free Trade Agreement is due to be signed.Pakistan has free trade agreements with both Afghanistan and Iran which are signed and are in the process of implementation, and currently most of Afghanistan trade is through Pakistan. And the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement is designed to facilitate trade for goods and services for Central Asia via both Afghanistan and Pakistan.This is in addition to the Ashgabat agreement which is a multi-modal transport agreement between the Central Asian states.

Further cooperation amongst members is planned in the form of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline as well as a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline. Current pipelines include the Tabriz–Ankara pipeline in addition to the planned Persian Pipeline. This is in addition to the transportation of oil and gas from resource rich Central Asian states such as Kazakshtan and Turkmenistan of minerals and agriculture that complements the industrialisation underway in Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. Pakistan plans to diversify its source of oil and gas supplies towards the Central Asian states including petroleum import contracts with Azerbaijan.