0
ISLAMABAD, Dec 2: Pakistan accused India on Monday of trying to scuttle next month’s summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) in Islamabad as it also urged the international community to take note of threatening statements of Indian leaders.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s remarks on Sunday making his participation in the seven-nation summit conditional on an end to the so-called “cross-border terrorism” were unwarranted and unacceptable.
Vajpayee was quoted as telling reporters in Shimla that he would go to the summit if Pakistan completely halted “cross-border terrorism” in Kashmir before the event scheduled for Jan 11-12 was held.
“What is the use of going to Pakistan for Saarc meeting when Pakistan is not prepared to talk on any issue except Kashmir,” he said.
“If the Indian government has reservations about attending the Saarc summit in Islamabad, it should say so clearly rather than raising red herrings every now and then,” a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
“It is now quite evident that India was engaged in effort to scuttle the Saarc summit,” the statement said.
Islamabad says failure of the Saarc to address bilateral problems hampers economic and other cooperation among the seven member states — Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives and Bhutan.
ADVANI’S SABRE-RATTLING: In another statement, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said the government of Pakistan had taken a serious note of a weekend statement by Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani advocating a fourth war between the two countries.
“The statement is bizarre as it has been made at a time when both Pakistan and India are engaged in withdrawing their forces from the Pakistan-India border,” he said.
He was responding to an election campaign speech by Advani in Gujarat state on Saturday that dared Pakistan to a fourth war with India if that would help end to what New Delhi calls “cross- border terrorism.”
India and Pakistan had moved about a million troops along their borders after a deadly attack on Indian parliament in December last year that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants fighting its rule in Kashmir.
The spokesman said Advani’s latest sabre-rattling was all the more regrettable as it represented a crude attempt to play the communal card in the forthcoming state election in Gujarat, where about 2,000, mostly Muslims, were killed in state-sponsored pogrom of Muslims after the burning of a train in February.
