Awareness includes creating awareness on SAARC as a region and the potential of the SAARC asset class.
But Mr Singh and the leaders of Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka did at least agree that things could change: SAARC, they agreed, would embark on a "decade of implementation".There are reasons to hope that SAARC can slough off its inertia.
In foreign trade, SAARC countries tend to compete more than they complement each other.
They were expected there for the annual shindig of South Asia's regional co-operation club, SAARC.
India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said SAARC remained "marginalised at the periphery" of the "emerging Asian resurgence".
This issue will be on the agenda at the upcoming South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting April 3-4, and XXXXXXXXXXXX, who told PolCouns March 12 that obtaining a transit route from Afghanistan through Pakistan to India was the "only benefit of Afghanistan's membership in SAARC," and that SAARC would be a disappointment if it didn't advance the transit issue.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's firm conviction in democracy is also well demonstrated in her statement made at the 16th SAARC Summit in Thimphu in April 2010 where she mooted first the idea of "SAARC Charter of Democracy".
Nepal and Pakistan resisted until India accepted their demand that SAARC try to accommodate China as an "observer".
Nirmala Sitharaman, a spokeswoman from Modi's Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), said all the SAARC countries had been invited through the proper channels.
India, which would prefer to see SAARC as a mechanism for extending its dominant regional influence, never likes its neighbours' "playing the China card".
Writers from eight South Asian countries will debate terrorism and ethnic identity and conflict at the 29th SAARC Festival of Literature, which starts today, in Agra, India.
