PRINCIPLES OF SAARC COUNTRIES

The principles are as follows:

>Respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, political equality and independence of all members states

> Non-interference in the internal matters is one of its objectives

>Cooperation for mutual benefit

> All decisions to be taken unanimously and need a quorum of all eight members

>All bilateral issues to be kept aside and only multilateral(involving many countries) issues to be discussed without being prejudiced by bilateral issues

Afghanistan was added to the regional grouping on April 2007,With the addition of Afghanistan, the total number of member states were raised to eight. In April 2006, the United States of America and South Korea made formal requests to be granted observer status. The European Union has also indicated interest in being given observer status, and made a formal request for the same to the SAARC Council of Ministers meeting in July 2006. On 2 August 2006 the foreign ministers of the SAARC countries agreed in principle to grant observer status to the US, South Korea and the European Union. On 4 March 2008, Iran requested observer status. Followed shortly by the entrance of Mauritius. Myanmar has expressed interest in upgrading it's status from an observer to a full member of SAARC, while Russia is interested in becoming an observer.