India urged to deal with festering issues: EU, US to be Saarc observers
DHAKA, Aug 1: Pakistan and India should stop bickering in public and resolve longstanding disputes over Kashmir and other issues instead of learning to live with problems, a top Pakistani official said on Tuesday.
Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan said he was also reassured that a peace process between the old rivals had not been frozen, despite India suspecting Pakistan-based militants of involvement in last month’s Mumbai train bombings.
Mr Khan’s comments came a day after he and his Indian counterpart, Shyam Saran, renewed their commitment to the peace process.
“It is very important that we should not simply learn to live with problems,” Mr Khan told reporters on the sidelines of a regional conference in the Bangladesh capital.
“We should try to learn to resolve problems. Resolution of problems is one of the best confidence-building measures,” said Mr Khan.
Although Mr Khan and Mr Saran did not set new dates for the meeting after their talks late on Monday, the Pakistani foreign secretary said it was now up to India to announce a schedule to resume the dialogue.
“In my meeting, I clearly detected that there is a resolve to maintain the peace process, there is no freeze on the peace process and in fact there was a reaffirmation for continuing the peace process,” Mr Khan said.—Reuters
Qudssia Akhlaque adds from Islamabad: India again raised the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (Safta) issue at the informal Saarc meeting, diplomatic sources told Dawn.
Apparently right at the outset of the informal session of the Saarc Council of Ministers (COM) meeting, the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs took the mike from the host Bangladeshi foreign minister and insisted that the meeting take up the Safta issue even if it was not on the agenda. He read out a statement basically accusing Pakistan of jeopardising Safta and solicited views of all Saarc member countries on the matter.
When the Bangladeshi foreign minister referred to the dispute settlement mechanism in Safta suggesting that India should first go for the bilateral channel to resolve the issue it had with Pakistan as had been proposed by the Nepalese foreign minister, the Indian minister intervened to give his own spin to the Nepalese minister’s statement, the sources said.
Earlier, the Indian delegation faced embarrassment when it was pointed out to the chair that Safta was not on the agenda of the COM meeting. Apparently the Safta issue had deviously been put on the list of agenda items later. The explanation given for the mysterious inclusion of Safta by director of India at the Saarc Secretariat was a ‘typographical error’!
Meanwhile, it appears a separate meeting between Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and Indian Minister of State E. Ahmed may not take place in Dhaka. When asked about the prospects of such a meeting, the Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam, who is also in Dhaka, simply said: “So far we have not received any request for it.”
SAARC OBSERVERS: Diplomatic sources in Dhaka said that the South Asian foreign ministers are all set to give the green light for granting observer status to the European Union, South Korea and the United States. Their applications were considered by the Saarc Standing Committee and would be formally approved by the foreign ministers on Wednesday, the sources said.
It is learnt that Indian delegation initially opposed the idea of allowing observers to make statements at the inaugural sessions of the Saarc-related meetings as observers in other regional groupings do.
On insistence of Pakistan and other member countries, India agreed to it but insisted that copies of their statements be circulated among member states ahead of the meetings for approval and to ensure they do not contain anything objectionable.
However, the chair proposed that it was better to convey to the observers that their statements should be in accordance with the spirit of Saarc.
