PARIS, June 9: Gen Jehangir Karamat, the special emissary of President Musharraf, is in Paris for a series of meetings with Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin as well as other high-level French authorities.

His arrival coincides with the decision by France to step up its intermediation in the India-Pakistan conflict, which has seen it recently coordinate its position on the conflict with Russia and notably Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Sent by President Musharraf as his special emissary to Paris, Gen Karamat will also be accorded the singular honour of addressing the foreign press club at their headquarters, not far from the Eiffel Tower. His talk is being sponsored by the Asia-Presse group of foreign correspondents.

The subject of his talk — scheduled for 3pm on Tuesday, June 11 — will be “War or Peace in South Asia?”. A packed standing-room-only assembly of journalists from the world’s leading publications and television organisations will be his audience.

Gen Karamat, who has just been to Rome and Madrid to meet with the national authorities of Italy and Spain, is expected to evoke the reasons behind his recent trip on behalf of Gen Musharraf, who would like the European Union to play a greater role in the settlement of Pakistan’s dispute with India.

He is also expected to offer Pakistani reaction to France’s desire to step up its role in the intermediation of the dispute between India and Pakistan, notably in light of the special role France feels it can play in the region given the terrorist killing on May 8 last of eleven French naval employees assigned to construct Agosta-90B submarine.

Although there have been calls within France, and notably within the ranks of the French Left, to cancel the 1991 Franco-Pakistani contract that calls for construction of three of the Agosta 90B submarines, President Chirac and Mr de Villepin, the French foreign minister, have indicated they want for the contract to be pursued, indeed have intimated that French naval workers will be allowed to return “very soon” to Karachi.

In the most recent manifestation of its desire to play a stepped-up role in mediating the dispute between India and Pakistan, France has brought to Moscow its campaign with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin revealing earlier this week that he had been attempting to come up with a joint Franco-Russian position with Foreign Minister Ivanov.