MOSCOW: Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, said yesterday [Nov 25] the chances were “fairly bright” for Indian and Pakistani leaders to meet on Soviet territory soon. He said his Government had accepted a Soviet offer of good offices “unconditionally”.

President Ayub Khan was ready to “discuss the whole gamut of Indo-Pakistan relations” with Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Indian Prime Minister, at a meeting in the Soviet Union, he said. Mr Bhutto was speaking at a Press conference (partly covered in yesterday’s “Dawn”), after a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Mr Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Prime Minister, in the Kremlin.

“We hope and we believe that India will co-operate and will respond,” Mr Bhutto said. “If it (the summit meeting) takes place, the prospects are that it will take place as soon a possible.” He said he believed the prospects were “fairly bright for a meeting late this year or early next year”.

Indian sources said after that the Indian Ambassador Mr Triloki Nath Kaul yesterday handed Mr Kosygin a “positive message” from Mr Shastri about the proposed meeting. They said a statement from New Delhi was likely in the next few days. “The ball is entirely in India’s court,” Mr Bhutto said.

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Rawalpindi,] the Sikh leader Master Tara Singh has advocated the formation of a “buffer state between India and Pakistan, in which the Sikhs should enjoy an independent position”. The Sikh leader spelled out his ideas on the future of the Sikhs in the Indian Union and their relationship with Pakistan, the home of their religion, in a series of articles written in the daily “Prabhat” of Jullundur.

He said: “It would be in the interests of the Sikhs themselves to remain friendly with both the countries. Such a state would end the India-Pakistan conflict permanently.”

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2015