Manmohan, Gilani to meet on SAARC summit sidelines(Second Lead, fixing time,venue)
By Sarwar Kashani, IANSWednesday, April 28, 2010
THIMPHU - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani here Thursday on the margins of the SAARC summit, an Indian official said Wednesday, ending the suspense over the much anticipated dialogue between the two South Asian rivals.
Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said the two prime ministers would meet Thursday in the Bhutanese capital after the two sides agreed through diplomatic channels to hold the dialogue.
“It has been agreed through diplomatic channels that the prime ministers of India and Pakistan will hold a bilateral meeting tomorrow at Thimphu,” Prakash told reporters.
There was no official word on the timing and venue of the meeting but highly placed sources told IANS that the two leaders would meet at 2 p.m.
The meeting would be held in the SAARC Village in Thimphu, specially created for the 16th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the sources added.
Peace talks between India and Pakistan were stalled after the 26/11, 2008, Mumbai terror attack that left 166 people dead. India blamed terrorists based in Pakistan for the nearly 60-hour attack.
This will be the first meeting between the two leaders after their talks at Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2009. A joint statement at the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting created an outcry in India as its references included Pakistan’s concerns that India was interfering in the insurgency in Baluchistan. India has denied this.
The foreign secretaries of the two countries - Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir - had met in the Indian capital in February this year but the talks ended in a stalemate after India insisted that the composite dialogue would resume only after Pakistan prosecutes the terrorist leaders based on its territory responsible for the Mumbai carnage.
The sources said India will focus on the core concern of cross-border terrorism and Pakistan’s alleged inaction against the perpetrators of the Mumbai mayhem.
Pakistan maintains that it has done enough to prosecute the terrorists allegedly responsible for the Mumbai attack as seven of those accused have been arrested.
