March 25, 2007	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 5, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, March 24: Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India, Riaz Mohammad Khan and Shiv Shankar Menon, will meet again next week on the sidelines of the 33rd session of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s (Saarc) Standing Committee in New Delhi.

This will be their second interaction since March 13 when they met here to launch the fourth round of the Composite Dialogue.

Mr Khan will leave for New Delhi on March 30 along with senior foreign ministry officials, including spokesperson Tasnim Aslam, diplomatic sources said on Saturday.

Although his visit would be in the context of Saarc, officials do not rule out the possibility of a separate meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two nuclear-armed neighbours. The top diplomats may use the opportunity for informal discussions on bilateral matters, they said.

The Saarc Standing Committee, headed by the foreign secretaries of the member states, is scheduled to meet on March 31 in the run up for the 14th annual Saarc Summit conference to be held in New Delhi.

Additionally on the eve of the two-day structured meeting the South Asian foreign secretaries will have an informal session. They will review a set of agenda items to be considered for the 14th summit and all the decisions taken at the last summit conference.

The preparatory meetings for the summit conference will begin on March 29 with the two-day sitting of the Programming Committee that assists the standing committee.

Foreign Ministry’s Director-General (South Asia Division) Jalil Abbas Jilani will lead Pakistan side at the Programming Committee meeting which is to finalise the calendar of activities and look at the Saarc secretariat matters, financial as well as administrative.

The Programming Committee will also submit recommendations for action on the reports of the technical committees to the Standing Committee. Progress made at the various meetings of the Saarc working groups and the technical committees would also be discussed.

The 14th summit conference will bring together the South Asian heads of governments on April 3-4 when Bangladesh will hand over the Saarc chairmanship to India.

Pakistan will be represented at the summit by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

The South Asian leaders will have a retreat on April 4 at the Hyderabad House in the Indian capital after which a joint declaration would be issued.

Meeting of the Council of Ministers preceding the summit will be held on April 2. Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri will leave for New Delhi on April 1. Indications from the Indian side are that Safta will be high on the agenda.

The highlight of the forthcoming summit will be the formal induction of Afghanistan as the regional grouping’s eighth member. The 13th Saarc Summit in Dhaka had approved Afghanistan’s request for the membership.

Saarc groups Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka. Another important aspect of the upcoming summit would be the representation of leading world powers including the US, China, EU, Japan and South Korea for the first time as observers.