The Hindu : Front Page : Advani in Pakistan on goodwill visit

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 31, 2005

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Front Page

Advani in Pakistan on goodwill visit

B. Muralidhar Reddy

Hopes his visit will help keep on track the peace efforts started by the Vajpayee-led Government

ISLAMABAD: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L.K. Advani arrived in Lahore tonight on a week-long trip on an official invitation from the Pakistan Government.

Mr. Advani's visit, coming after a gap of 26 years, politically signals the wholehearted support of his party to the India-Pakistan peace process. On the personal front, it gives an opportunity to him to renew links with his birthplace.

Pakistan is going out of its way to make Mr. Advani's visit not only high profile but also successful. His first official engagement on Tuesday morning is with Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. It will be followed by an interactive session with President Pervez Musharraf and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri.

After his official and political engagements here, he is scheduled to leave for Lahore to spend two days with a cross section of society in Punjab province. He would then go to Karachi — from where he migrated to India before Partition — and spend two days before returning home.

The visit of Mr. Advani has evoked a great deal of interest in the Pakistani media.

Anita Joshua reports from New Delhi:

Mr. Advani was given a warm send-off by BJP leaders and workers at the party office in the morning. In the evening, many of them lined up at the airport to see him off.

Mr. Advani told the partymen that the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had made several serious efforts to normalise relations with Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had continued and taken forward that approach.

He said he "hoped that his own visit would also help keep on track the [peace] efforts started by the National Democratic Alliance Government."

Congress hopeful

Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said the party was hopeful of Mr. Advani pursuing the line taken by the Government during his visit.

Stating that Mr. Advani had a "reputation of taking a hawkish view in the National Democratic Alliance Government'', she pointed out the well-established practice of all of India speaking in one voice on matters relating to external affairs.

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