Bangladesh Sunday called on its neighbors to strengthen regional cooperation to improve quality of life of over 1.4 billion people living in the slow-growing SAARC region Countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) should increase cooperation in a number of untapped areas, including science and technology, for better life and greater empowerment, said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed. She was inaugurating a two-day SAARC seminar on "Current goods manufacturing practices in pharmaceutical sector, Radiation processing, and Insects resistant crop variety for sustainable agriculture" in Dhaka. Regretting that South Asia had not moved as fast as ASEAN, NAFTA and other regional blocks, Hasina emphasized further cooperation in socio-economic, technical and scientific fields among the members of the regional block which came into being in the mid-1980s. Reiterating her unflinching support for the ideals and missions of the SAARC, Hasina hoped that the regional grouping would play an effective role as a lead agency in establishing peace in South Asia. "I am optimistic about our collective future and confident that the best is yet to come," she was quoted as saying by the German News Agency "DPA." She also emphasized the need for concerted efforts of further development of the agricultural sector to feed the huge population, increasing in a faster pace, of the region.
