The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Sunday, November 10, 2002, Chandigarh, India

THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS

50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

M A I N N E W S

SAARC meet: PM may send Sinha
Rajeev Sharma
Tribune News Service

Factfile

Factors against PM Vajpayee’s visit to Islamabad for participating in the SAARC summit:

1. There are signals that Pakistan will be pushing its own agenda in the SAARC summit, ignoring well-known Indian demands.

2. Pakistan may use the coming Islamabad event to push Kashmir centrestage and yield little on India’s stand on the issue of terrorism.

3. There is serious apprehension that while Mr Vajpayee is in Pakistan, a major terrorist strike or a series of high-profile attacks may take place in India, embarrassing India.

4. Pakistan does not see eye to eye with India on the issue of economic cooperation and contentious issues like the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) and the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA).

New Delhi, November 9
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is disinclined to visit Islamabad in January, 2003, for the next summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

However, this will not send a signal that India is out to undermine the SAARC process as the Prime Minister may send External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha to Islamabad to represent India, well-placed sources in political, bureaucratic and security circles disclosed to The Tribune today.

The sources said Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and Mr Yashwant Sinha were opposed to Mr Vajpayee attending the SAARC summit in Pakistan, while the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra was for Mr Vajpayee’s participation in the summit.

The international community, particularly the USA and the UK, has been pressurising India to resume dialogue with Pakistan after the successful and free and fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir. US Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill and British High Commissioner Rob Young had recently met Mr Brajesh Mishra. They are understood to have asked New Delhi to resume talks with Pakistan.

The sources said a section of the PMO was also in favour of the Prime Minister travelling to Pakistan to send a signal to the international community that India was committed to do everything possible to normalise relations with Pakistan though Islamabad continued to foment cross-border terrorism against India.

However, Mr Advani is understood to be firmly against India offering an olive branch to Pakistan, particularly after the Ansal Plaza episode.

Besides, now that assembly elections in Gujarat are due next month and general elections are also not far off, politically too it suits the Vajpayee government and the BJP to continue to have a tough stand of “no talks with Pakistan until cross-border terrorism stops”.

The sources said the political situation in Pakistan was still fluid and it would matter a lot who takes over as the Prime Minister of Pakistan and what political equation emerges in that country.

If the rabidly fundamentalist chief of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami Maulana Fazlur Rehman becomes the Prime Minister, it will be a major development to be factored in and India’s stand on the SAARC summit will depend on the utterances of the new Pakistani Prime Minister, the sources added.