The Hindu : No plan for PM, Musharraf meeting

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 16, 2003

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No plan for PM, Musharraf meeting

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 15. The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, leaves for a 12-day foreign tour tomorrow, which will take him to Turkey prior to the 58th session of the United Nations' General Assembly in New York. He is expected back in the Capital on September 28.

Briefing presspersons on the visit, the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, said this evening that no meeting was planned with the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

While Mr. Vajpayee is to address the General Assembly on September 25, Gen. Musharraf will do so a day before on September 24. The tone and tenor of the speeches will be closely watched by either side.

SAARC summit

Asked whether the Prime Minister would be travelling to Islamabad for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in January, the Foreign Secretary quipped: "Please ask if he will not go."

Pointing to the need for progress on the economic agenda of SAARC, as agreed upon during a recent meeting of Foreign Secretaries in Kathmandu, Mr. Sibal was less than keen on a visit by the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, to New Delhi to personally hand over an invitation to attend the SAARC summit. (Mr. Kasuri has recently been in Dhaka and Colombo for the same purpose).

Under the SAARC charter, Mr. Sibal claimed, it was not necessary for invitations to be handed over personally to individual SAARC leaders. "There is no requirement for a personal visit."

Referring to the Prime Minister's programme in New York, the Foreign Secretary said that other than meeting the U.S. President, George W.Bush, Mr. Vajpayee would meet with the leaders of Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

He will also attend a trilateral Heads of Government meeting among India, South Africa and Brazil as part of a new initiative aimed at economic and political cooperation taken by the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha.

Failure at Cancun

Asked for his response to the collapse of multilateral trade negotiations at Cancun, Mr. Sibal said it was not for him to give a definitive response, but added that no one should be "happy" at this setback.

The Foreign Secretary, however, stressed that the lack of flexibility and inability to compromise on the part of the developed world on the Singapore issues and agriculture led to the collapse of the talks.

"Irresponsible"

To a question on Israeli threats to the life of the Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, Mr. Sibal said: "We have seen (the) Israeli Deputy Prime Minister's reported statement on assassination of President Arafat being an option.

"We note that the reported statement injects greater stridency in Israeli pronouncements during the last few days. India, which has consistently regarded President Arafat as the elected leader of the Palestinian people and symbol of their cause, cannot but take strong exception to such statements," he said.

"We hope that the already tense and uncertain situation in (the) Israeli-Palestine theatre would not be exacerbated by such irresponsible pronouncements. We firmly believe that instead of dealing with symptoms through such actions, sincere efforts must be made to address the malaise itself," he added.

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