NEW DELHI, Aug 21: India said on Wednesday that it was yet to take a decision on attending next year’s SAARC summit in Islamabad after its most senior diplomat cast doubts over New Delhi’s participation if Pakistan first did not address the issue of cross-border infiltration.

“We have not yet taken any decision on the matter,” Press Trust of India quoted India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nirupama Rao as saying in Kathmandu, where foreign ministers of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation began a meeting on Wednesday.

Rao was responding to a question that appeared to flow from Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal’s remarks to an Indian news channel in which he had aired his doubts about the Islamabad SAARC summit expected to be held in April.

Sibal had told Aaj Tak TV channel that India could not commit its participation at the summit as that would depend on the issues that are seen as holding up their rapprochement, primarily cross-border infiltration which India accuses Pakistan of helping in Kashmir.

The PTI quoted Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar as saying, apparently in response to Sibal’s and Rao’s remarks, that “we will invite everybody to Islamabad for the proposed summit. We are looking forward for their participation.”

Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes was quoted by Star TV as saying on Tuesday that a military buildup on the border with Pakistan could stay beyond its widely expected deadline of October, citing what he called continued Pakistani help in cross-border infiltration.

Diplomats and neutral analysts see India’s domestic, mostly electoral, compulsions behind the continued standoff with Pakistan because it is believed to help the consolidation of an ultranationalist constituency represented by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

Indian media reports said the issue of “Pak-sponsored cross- border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir” also figured prominently in the talks Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani had with his British counterpart, John Prescott, in London on Wednesday.

Advani is understood to have conveyed India’s concern over continued support to “cross-border terrorism” by Pakistan and its alleged attempts to disrupt forthcoming elections in occupied Kashmir.

Alleged funding of Kashmiri militants by London-based Muslim groups is also believed to have come up for discussions.

India has already provided documentary proof to the British authorities with regard to funding of militants in the held state by London-based Kashmiri leader Ayub Thakur with the plea for his trial in Britain, one report said.

The PTI, reporting from Kathmandu, said that in view of the “infiltration” not being resolved to New Delhi’s satisfaction, India on Wednesday rejected Pakistan’s fresh offer for resumption of dialogue without pre-conditions, saying “appropriate conditions” for it did not exist.

He was asked about Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inamul Haq’s remarks that Islamabad was “ready to start the dialogue today” if New Delhi agreed to it.

“We would like to see evidence of the fulfilment of the commitments which President Musharraf has made. The appropriate conditions for talks will arise only thereafter,” Sinha said.

He, however, shook hands with Haq and the two were photographed walking together towards the conference hall.

“One doesn’t have to be secretive about it [the handshake]... civility is a sign of culture and there is no reason for anyone to depart from cultural traditions, especially for an Indian. There was nothing more than that,” Sinha said after the meeting’s inauguration. “I have no plans of meeting Pakistani foreign minister at all.”

The Pakistan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Inamul Haq, however, said, “If they [India] are interested then we can talk.”