It’s official now. After days of speculation, decks were cleared today for the much-anticipated meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani here tomorrow on the margins of the SAARC Summit.

"It has been agreed through diplomatic channels that the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan will hold a bilateral meeting tomorrow at Thimphu," MEA spokesman Vishnu Prakash told reporters. Indications are that the meeting would take place in the afternoon. The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are reported to have finalised the agenda for the meeting, which will be the first between the two PMs after their interaction at the Egyptian sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt on the fringes of the NAM Summit in July last year.

Indian officials declined to say if a joint statement would be issued by the two sides. Perhaps the fiasco over the joint statement issued at Sharm-el-Sheikh is still fresh in the mind of National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, who was then the Foreign Secretary. Balochistan had for the first time found a mention in an Indo-Pak joint statement and India had also agreed to delink the issue of terrorism from dialogue with Pakistan. The PM had to face the ire of the Opposition over the joint statement while his own Congress party refused to back him on it, thus forcing him to put the document in the cold storage.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi sought to add a new dimension to India’s refusal to resume full-fledged dialogue with Pakistan until the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks were brought to justice. He claimed that Manmohan Singh was keen to resume the dialogue but was unable to move forward due to pressure from the Congress party. Indian officials laughed off Qureshi’s statement, saying it was not the first time he had made this claim.

In an apparent reference to the Jammu and Kashmir issue, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani today said terrorism in South Asia had roots in history, economic neglect and injustice and called upon SAARC states to fight the menace individually and collectively.

Tools of tradition: Bhutanese men in traditional attire play musical instruments before the start of the summit in Thimphu on Wednesday. — Reuters

“Terrorism has affected our region and impacted each one of us… this toxic brew, under the garb of diverse ideologies and diverse agendas, has taken roots,” he said addressing the opening session of the 16th SAARC Summit here.

Minutes later, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai called upon the SAARC countries not to allow the misuse of their territories directly or indirectly for sheltering or training terror networks.

“Terrorists attacks in the last two years in Kabul, Islamabad and Mumbai were gruesome reminders to us that terrorism continue to find place in our region. It has scaled its reach and become the biggest threat to peace in our region,” he said. The Pakistan PM’s indirect reference to Kashmir came against Islamabad’s repeated accusations that India was neglecting Kashmir and committing grave human rights in the Valley, a charge which, New Delhi says, has no basis.