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| April 25, 2007 | Wednesday | Rabi-us-Sani 07, 1428 |
Agenda set for Ankara meeting
ISLAMABAD, April 24: President Pervez Musharraf will have an extensive interaction with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai in Ankara, where a ‘warm-up’ dinner to be hosted by the Turkish president on Sunday will be followed by formal talks the next morning.
According to sources, on the eve of the talks an informal dinner meeting will be held to be attended also by the Turkish prime minister at whose initiative the trilateral meeting has been arranged.
The formal talks slated for Monday morning will begin with a one-to-one session between the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan followed by a trilateral meeting with the Turkish prime minister at which the foreign ministers and key aides from each side will also be present.
“It is likely to be a one-plus-four affair,” a diplomatic source told Dawn, adding that Gen Musharraf and Mr Karzai would also be assisted by their top intelligence officials.
During the meeting, an attempt will be made to remove irritants that have put Pakistan-Afghanistan relations in high strain.
Effort would be geared towards an agreement on ending the blame game and not conducting diplomacy through media, sources said.
Also high on the agenda would be security cooperation, particularly acceptability of various measures of border control taken by Pakistan, including biometric cards that had met with resistance from the Afghan side and facilitation of refugee repatriation, they said.
President Musharraf was also likely to raise the issue of Baloch dissidents being present in Afghanistan, they said.
The two leaders last met in September 2006 at the White House but the meeting failed to clear the air.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz met President Karzai on April 4 in New Delhi. Notably, since then the Afghan president has refrained from anti-Pakistan utterances.
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