October 29, 2002	Tuesday	Sha’aban 22,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 28: The foreign office appeared to confirm on Monday reports that the Saarc summit scheduled for early January might not be attended by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

At his weekly briefing, spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan declined to take any questions aimed at knowing the objective of President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s re-scheduled visit to Saudi Arabia.

According to a press release, the president will meet King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, and discuss with them the India-Pakistan relations, the Middle East situation and other matters. The president will leave for the Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and return on Wednesday.

Asked for comments on a New Delhi report which quoted the Indian prime minister as having suspected that Islamabad had sought to sabotage the Saarc summit in January by planning to raise the Kashmir issue in one form or another during the summit deliberations, the spokesman said Pakistan had welcomed Mr Vajpayee’s earlier statements that he would come to Islamabad for the summit.

As an established rule of Saarc, the spokesman said, a summit meeting could not be held in case any of its member failed to take part in its deliberations.

He said that Saarc aimed at meaningful economic cooperation among the regional states and “Pakistan’s standpoint has been that meaningful cooperation is possible only when there is a situation which does not threaten peace and security in the region. If the threat to peace and security remains, it obviously becomes an impediment to cooperation in Saarc,” he elaborated.

“That is why”, the spokesman said, “Pakistan feels that the resolution of all outstanding problems, particularly the resolution of the problems which have bedevilled the relations and endangered peace and security situation of the region, is important in order to promote economic relations among the member states”.

The spokesman repudiated the Indian accusation that Pakistan was dragging feet in promoting the Saarc objectives of regional economic cooperation and relations among the member states, and said Pakistan had positively taken part in all Saarc activities and would continue to do so.

However, he maintained, slow progress in economic agreements took time to speed up since it needed close examination of all its details so that the interest of all the members states were fairly served.

Mr Khan told a questioner that there had been no communication with New Delhi following the latter’s statement a couple of weeks ago about the withdrawal of troops or about any revival of diplomatic relations and air, rail and road travel between the two countries.

He that said troop deployment as well as all other negative steps were initiated by India, suggesting it was for New Delhi to take steps to repair them. As far as Pakistan was concerned, he said, it had all along maintained that massing of forces by India would yield no useful results and added that even now Islamabad remained ready to open a dialogue on all outstanding issues.

The spokesman hoped that with the return on Sunday of the first Pakistani from Guantanamo Bay such other detainees from the US detention centres would start arriving.

There are believed to be some 54 Pakistanis who were mistakenly taken prisoners by the United States forces in Afghanistan.