Pakistan seeks new South Asian bloc to cut India out: Will it work?

Pakistan says an emerging three-way cooperation with Bangladesh and China could be ‘expanded and duplicated’.

Pakistan Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar has said that a recent trilateral initiative between Bangladesh, China and Islamabad could be “expanded” to include other regional nations and beyond.

“We have opposed … zero-sum approaches and consistently stressed the imperative of cooperation rather than confrontation,” he told the Islamabad Conclave forum on Wednesday.

In effect, the proposal amounts to the creation of an alternative bloc focused on South Asia, with China added, at a time when the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — the region’s main grouping — has been made almost defunct by heightened India-Pakistan tensions in recent years.

In June, diplomats from China, Pakistan and Bangladesh held trilateral talks focusing on regional stability, economic development and enhancing people’s lives, a cooperation they said was “not directed at any third party”.

Dar’s remarks come against a backdrop of escalating regional tensions, including Pakistan’s decades-long rivalry with India. The two nuclear-armed neighbours fought a brief four-day air war in May, further straining relations.