M A I N   N E W S

India-Pak defence secy-level talks on April 6
Rajeev Sharma
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 2
The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan today continued to have divergent views on terrorism, trade and transit rights to Afghanistan when they held a bilateral meeting on the margins of the 14th SAARC summit that begins tomorrow.

No new grounds were broken in Indo-Pakistan bilateral relations when the two foreign ministers — Pranab Mukherjee and Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri — met for half an hour.

Though the SAARC foreign ministers today approved the idea of extending the multi-modal transport system to the grouping’s new member Afghanistan, Pakistan did not yield from its known position of refusing to grant land transit right to India for reaching out to Afghanistan.

Pranab Mukherjee, in his interaction with editors of the visiting member countries today, was asked by a Pakistani journalist whether there was any progress on the issue of Pakistan giving overland transit rights to India for reaching out to Pakistan. Mukherjee replied, “Let us discuss, let us find out if there is any difficulty and let us remove that. After all, we have to proceed on the basis of discussions and planning. There is no other way. However strenuous it may be, we shall have to pursue that path.” Siachen and Sir Creek issues were discussed in detail at the Mukherjee-Kasuri meeting, especially in view of the fact that the two countries’ Defence Secretaries are going to meet in Islamabad on April 6. Siachen and Sir Creek issues are going to dominate the Defence Secretaries’ talks. For long, Pakistan has been maintaining that a resolution of the two bilateral disputes was round the corner and all that was required was “political will” on part of the two governments.

India and Pakistan continued to stick to their respectively stated positions on a host of other issues, including bilateral trade and SAFTA.

Terrorism topped the agenda of India’s other bilateral meetings with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as Pranab Mukherjee held separate meetings with Fakhruddin Ahmed, Chief Adviser to the caretaker government of Bangladesh. Mukherjee also met his Sri Lankan counterpart Rohitha Bogollagama.

The issue of terrorism also came up for discussion in a concerted manner at a meeting of SAARC foreign ministers today. Of the eight-nation SAARC, only Maldives and Bhutan are somewhat unaffected by the problem of terrorism while the rest are grappling with the menace.

Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, when asked a question on the issue of terrorism at the SAARC foreign ministers’ meeting, said they did not get bogged down in matters like definition of terrorism and would continue to stay engaged.

Meanwhile, Kasuri today virtually dismissed a prototype of Indo-Pak joint anti-terror mechanism for the entire SAARC. In response to a question from this correspondent, Kasuri said the Indo-Pak joint mechanism on countering terrorism had been set up in view of historical reasons and bilateral problems and the same did not apply in the context of SAARC as a whole.