NEW DELHI, Nov 12: Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday rejected Pakistan’s bid to put a deadline for New Delhi to confirm its participation in the SAARC summit proposed to be held in January in Islambad.

“Nobody can set a deadline. SAARC works on the basis of consensus,” Sinha was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying in Seoul where he is attending the second ministerial Conference of Democracies.

“One country cannot set a deadline for another,” Sinha said. He was reacting to a Pakistan foreign ministry statement of Monday.

Pakistan foreign office spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan had said that Islamabad, the host of the SAARC summit, would soon set a cut-off date for India and Bhutan to respond on the proposed SAARC summit in January.

Islamabad says five of the seven SAARC members have okayed the January 11 to 13 dates proposed by Pakistan for the summit.

Pakistani officials in New Delhi said the date was in fact proposed by India when the foreign ministers of the SAARC nations met in Kathmandu recently.

“It was India’s view in Kathmandu that SAARC summits should be held in January of each year. That’s what we are trying to do,” a senior diplomat at the Pakistan High Commission told Dawn.

He said a separate meeting of SAARC foreign ministers held in New York on September 16 had unanimously agreed that all the member states would notify their participation within a week but that never happened.

India has a clutch of issues that it sees as deterring its participation in a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit but has not said a final no to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee going to Islambad eventually.

The current problem being highlighted by New Delhi is Pakistan’s reluctance to accord India the Most Favoured Nation status in trade.

Pakistani officials say the issue was one of several economic measures to be taken up by the SAARC leaders for discussion.

“There are equally important economic issues such as the neglect of the interests of the least developed countries who are also members of SAARC,” a Pakistan official said.

“These are chiefly problems these countries have with India.”

Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman, Aziz Ahmad Khan said on Monday that Islamabad would wait for “a few days more” before deciding on the cut-off date for a response from Delhi and Thimphu.

He expressed the hope that India would soon communicate its acceptance since a considerable time was required to make arrangements for holding the summit.