Which of the following countries is NOT a member of BIMSTEC?

The correct answer is D, Addu City. The seventeenth SAARC summit was held in November 2011 at Addu City in the Maldives, the country's second largest urban area, on Addu Atoll in the far south of the chain, and its theme was building bridges. Option A is wrong because Male is the capital of the Maldives and hosted an earlier SAARC summit, which is why it is the strongest distractor here; the Maldives has hosted the summit more than once and the venue in 2011 was deliberately moved away from the capital. Option B is wrong because Dhaka hosted the very first summit in 1985, at which the SAARC Charter was adopted, and also a later one. Option C is wrong because Colombo in Sri Lanka has hosted SAARC summits of its own but not the seventeenth. The eighteenth summit, in 2014, was held at Kathmandu.

The correct answer is B, 1985 at Dhaka. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation came into being on 8 December 1985, when the heads of state and government of seven South Asian countries adopted its Charter at the first summit in Dhaka; the proposal had been made by President Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh at the start of the decade, and 8 December is observed as SAARC Charter Day. Option A is wrong because 1983 is the year of the New Delhi declaration on South Asian regional cooperation, a preparatory step by the foreign ministers rather than the founding. Option C is wrong because 1987 is the year the SAARC Secretariat was opened at Kathmandu, on 16 January, a fact often swapped with the founding. Option D is wrong because Colombo hosted later summits and is not connected with the founding year.

The correct answer is B, Kathmandu. The SAARC Secretariat was established at Kathmandu in Nepal on 16 January 1987 and is headed by a Secretary-General chosen from the member states in turn; it coordinates the work of the technical committees and the regional centres. Option A is wrong because Dhaka is the city of the first summit of 1985 and is also the seat of the BIMSTEC Secretariat, which makes it the most likely wrong choice here. Option C is wrong because Colombo has hosted summits and is the headquarters of none of the three main groupings in this chapter. Option D is wrong because New Delhi hosts the South Asian University, opened in 2010 as a SAARC institution, and hosted the fourteenth summit in 2007 at which Afghanistan was admitted, but not the Secretariat. Remember Kathmandu for SAARC, Jakarta for ASEAN and Dhaka for BIMSTEC.

The correct answer is B, Afghanistan. SAARC began with seven members, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan was admitted as the eighth member at the fourteenth summit held in New Delhi in 2007, making it the only country to have joined the grouping after its founding. Option A is wrong because Myanmar is an observer at SAARC, and is instead a full member of BIMSTEC, which it joined in 1997. Option C is wrong because Mauritius is also an observer at SAARC, besides being the seat of the Indian Ocean Rim Association at Ebene. Option D is wrong because Iran is an observer and has sought membership without obtaining it. The list of observers, which includes China, Japan, the United States, the European Union, South Korea and Australia as well, is the set these three distractors come from.

The correct answer is A, the Bangkok Declaration. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was created on 8 August 1967 by the Bangkok Declaration, also called the ASEAN Declaration, signed by the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; 8 August is observed as ASEAN Day. Option B is wrong because Jakarta is the seat of the ASEAN Secretariat but not the city of the founding declaration, and the two facts are deliberately mixed in option sheets. Option C is wrong because Manila has given its name to other agreements of the region and hosted later ASEAN summits. Option D is wrong because Singapore, although a founder, is associated with the ASEAN Declaration of Concord of a later period and with the secretariat of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Note also that BIMSTEC was founded in 1997 by a Bangkok Declaration of its own.