UN General Assembly
1997

striving to accelerate progress in core areas of cooperation, such as poverty eradication, expansion of regional trade and investment. We have also, within the ambit of SAARC, launched a “growth quadrangle” involving four member States — Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Bhutan — in order to explore areas of joint economic activity and take advantage of the factor of contiguity. Moreover, outside of SAARC, Bangladesh has entered the Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIST-EC) in order to boost cooperation in the economic and commercial fields among its four member countries. A consensus decision has now been taken to allow Myanmar to join this subregional group as a full member. Last year, while addressing the General Assembly, I referred to the negotiations that were being held with India on sharing the waters of the Ganges River. This had proved to be an intractable problem for over two decades and it is a matter of great satisfaction to us all that, in December last year, we signed a 30-year treaty at the highest political level with India on sharing arrangements. The signing of