Ball in Pak court: India says 2018 SAARC summit unlikely

Smita Sharma 

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 24

India resetting ties with China does not imply Delhi will soften its position on Pakistan and terrorism sponsored from its soil, said sources. Questions are being raised if Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be in the same room with his Pakistani counterpart during the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) summit in China in June, will be open to formally reviving dialogue with Islamabad. India and Pakistan became full members of the SCO last year. 

New Delhi believes multilateral dynamics are different from bilateral ones and that it is too early to comment on the possibility of a handshake or conversation between the India-Pakistan PMs on the SCO sidelines in Qingdao, the sources say. Also, India is not warming up to the idea of reviving SAARC this year. The summit dialogue to be hosted in Islamabad in 2016 saw an India-led boycott in the wake of the Uri terror strikes. Unless Pakistan passes on the hosting right, Indian PM will be unwilling to participate.

And the eight-member South Asian grouping charter states that even if one head of government or state does not attend, the summit meet cannot be held. “In the current situation, we do not contemplate a SAARC summit. It is difficult to have a summit when one of the countries is involved in actively sponsoring cross- border terrorism. There has to be a conducive environment for it,” underlined a government source, ahead of Modi’s talks with Xi Jinping, President of Pakistan’s all-weather friend China.

Interestingly, India managed to win Chinese support at the global counter-terror funding body FATF (Financial Action Task Force) meeting recently to grey-list Pakistan.