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NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 29 November 2003 — In a further boost for peace hopes in South Asia, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has said that he is keen to meet with his Pakistani counterpart Zafarullah Khan Jamali on the sidelines of a regional summit in Islamabad in January.
Leaders from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Maldives and Bhutan are scheduled to attend the summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Countries in Islamabad on Jan. 4-6.
“I will be meeting with everybody and if he (Jamali) meets me I will be happy,” Vajpayee told reporters in Lucknow late Thursday. “The program for my visit to Pakistan is being finalized,” he said.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan yesterday welcomed Vajpayee’s remarks. “We have been calling for it and if Mr. Vajpayee has dropped reservations we welcome this move,” he said.
In New Delhi yesterday, visiting European Union External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten said the EU was willing to offer any assistance to carry forward dialogue between India and Pakistan.
“The international community will oblige if India wanted it to do so,” he said, according to the Press Trust of India.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf spoke to former US President Bill Clinton by phone, telling him he expected the latest peace measures would lead to dialogue with India, an official statement said.
Musharraf and Clinton “discussed India-Pakistan relations,” it said, adding that the Pakistani leader had briefed Clinton on the latest developments.
Musharraf also received a US congressional delegation including former first lady Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Jack Reed at his residence late Thursday night.
The Democrat senators, both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, were on an official visit to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Musharraf and the US lawmakers discussed the situation in Afghanistan and the recent steps taken by Pakistan with regard to improvement of relations with India.
Vajpayee also indicated he may meet with President Musharraf. The two met briefly face-to-face early last year, but haven’t had a formal meeting since June 2001.
Vajpayee has already said he will attend the meeting, but government officials have not been clear on whether he would speak to Musharraf.
Vajpayee has shunned the Pakistani president at international meetings since a December 2001 attack on India’s Parliament that he blames on Pakistan’s intelligence agency and two militant groups based in Pakistan.
While both Vajpayee and Musharraf have separately begun talking about dialogue, Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha has ruled out any immediate summit-level meeting between the two leaders.
“We have (been) saying that summit-level talks between India and Pakistan can take place only when parleys at the lower level are held and there is a meeting of minds and possibility of agreement,” Sinha told Doordarshan television late Thursday.
“If some issues remain unresolved, these could be decided at the summit talks ... but we do not want that the talks should begin at the summit level,” he said.
Despite Tuesday’s truce between the armies, violence again struck Kashmir. Indian soldiers fought a gunbattle with militants about two kilometers from the border late Thursday and early yesterday. At least three militants were killed, but Pakistani troops did not interfere.
“This group was infiltrating from the Pakistan side. This is the first infiltration bid detected by the army since the cease-fire,” said Indian Army Northern Command spokesman, Col. R.K. Sen. He said three militants’ bodies had been recovered and that the soldiers were searching for more.
An officer at the police control room near the site, speaking on condition of anonymity, said however that the militants were trying to get out of India and back into Pakistan when the gunfight broke out.
Indian Army Chief Gen. N.C. Vij is in Jammu and Kashmir on a two-day visit to review the cease-fire situation. Since the declaration of the cease-fire and its reciprocation by India, it has not been violated by Pakistani troops, Col. Sen said in Jammu yesterday.
There is no cease-fire between the Indian forces and the militants, and at least 12 people died Thursday in a grenade attack on a busy marketplace and in battles between Indian troops and suspected rebels in villages along the frontier.
(Additional input from agencies)
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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