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| Sunday, 6 January 2002 |
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India, Pakistan set to ignore each other at South Asian summit KATHMANDU, Jan 5 (AFP) - South Asian leaders were to open a long-awaited summit in Nepal Saturday where India continued to rule out any direct talks with arch-rival Pakistan despite outside pressure to kickstart a dialogue between the nuclear powers. India has repeatedly said its prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, will not hold his first meeting since July with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf until Islamabad cracks down harder on Islamic militants blamed for the deadly December 13 attack on parliament in New Delhi. "It is not as if the door has been shut with Pakistan for a dialogue, but under the present circumstances, when the seat of a democracy was attacked, a certain threshold was crossed," Indian spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said Friday. Musharraf has said he was ready to talk with Vajpayee but that it was up to India to make the next move. "If there is willingness on both sides, there can be talks; it can't be a one-sided affair," said Musharraf as he arrived here for his first summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) since the 1999 coup that brought him to power. The Kathmandu summit, delayed for two years due to bickering between India and Pakistan, was postponed again by a day when poor weather made Musharraf several hours late in arriving Friday. The heads of state and government of the seven-member regional body held their first function together Friday night when they dined at Nepal's royal palace. Musharraf and Vajpayee did not make direct contact during the banquet, sources from the two countries said. The summit's postponement led organizers to cancel a retreat scheduled for Saturday near Mount Everest that would have been the most opportune time for Vajpayee and Musharraf to meet away from the media spotlight. But both Pakistani and Indian officials indicated they were open to selecting a new venue for an informal gathering of the South Asian leaders. The Kathmandu summit comes after India and Pakistan exchanged the harshest diplomatic reprisals in 30 years, with New Delhi withdrawing its ambassador from Islamabad and closing Indian airspace to Pakistani planes in the wake of the parliament attack. The two sides have also deployed troops to their common border and again late Thursday traded gunfire in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory that is at the center of their half-century conflict. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Friday there was "still a very dangerous situation" between India and Pakistan. "There are some encouraging signs out there but I don't want to overplay this," he told the BBC. Pakistan has detained a number of Islamic extremists since the parliament attack in India, including the leaders of the two movements New Delhi accuses of carrying out the incident. Musharraf's government -- which strongly denies its swoops are in response to Indian pressure -- again early Friday detained scores of militants, including, according to police sources, some who are part of the 12-year separatist insurgency in Indian-ruled Kashmir. Powell said Washington was considering dispatching a special envoy to the region, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair continued a regional tour that began in Bangladesh. He is scheduled to meet Sunday in New Delhi with Vajpayee, who Indian officials said intended to fly home as soon as SAARC proceedings finished that day. Musharraf will meet Blair the next day. On Thursday he held talks in Beijing with Pakistan's key ally China, which pledged its support amid the stand-off with India. Pakistani spokesman Rashid Qureshi later said that in talks, "China stood by Pakistan and still stands by Pakistan. It will support Pakistan in all eventuality." Meanwhile leaders of the five other SAARC nations -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka -- held a flurry of bilateral meetings, expecting the 16-year-old regional bloc's proceedings once again to be sideswiped by friction between its two giants. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said in her talks with India and Pakistan she was encouraging a cooling of tensions. "We all want peace in the region," she told reporters. The view was echoed by Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who said she hoped New Delhi and Islamabad "resolve it (their dispute) through discussions." |
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