May 13, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 10, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, May 12: Pakistan has proposed to convene the 12th Saarc summit in Islamabad in the first half of December, informed government sources told Dawn on Monday.

The proposal was officially communicated to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s secretariat in Kathmandu shortly after Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali Khan unveiled confidence-building measures with India last week, a senior official involved in the Saarc process told Dawn.

In his announcement on May 6, the prime minister had mentioned that Pakistan would soon be giving fresh dates for the summit. Earlier last month, he had approved a summary proposal for new dates.

The Saarc secretary-general will communicate proposed dates to all member states for their consent. The summit was initially slated for Jan 11 to 13 in Islamabad but it had to be postponed owing to non-confirmation of participation by India and Bhutan.

The main reason cited by the Indians for not attending the summit was the non-removal of 78 items on the negative list of trade. With the prime minister removing those items from the negative list on May 6 the matter appears to have settled.

Many countries, including the United States, had urged Pakistan to remove those items from the negative list to help modify the Indian position on the summit.

Many in Pakistan and across the border see the 12th Saarc summit as the first tacit test of the genuineness of the Indian leadership’s recent peace overtures.

However, recent statements emanating from India’s ministry of external affairs that measures announced by Pakistan were “inadequate” make analysts here suspicious about the Indian motives. There is an apprehension that given India’s tense relations with other Saarc member countries, such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, New Delhi may not share the Saarc platform with them in Pakistan.

The 12th summit was not the first to be postponed. Two summits were postponed before, one in 1991 and the other in 1999.

The last Saarc summit scheduled for November 1999 in Kathmandu had to be put off till January 2002 because India refused to share the platform with President General Pervez Musharraf who had assumed power as the country’s chief executive through a military coup a few days before the summit.