NEW DELHI: Visiting Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari will hold a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday at 7, Race Course Road, before the two leaders sit down for lunch, reports said on Saturday.

No customary note-takers of the Pakistani President would be present inside the room during the meeting.

Highly-placed sources in the government have informed that it was done at the insistence of New Delhi to which Islamabad has agreed.

After the talks, no formal statements are likely to be made by both leaders and neither are any agreements likely to be announced. The action will be mostly behind the scenes, sources said. Zardari is expected to press Singh to visit Pakistan, reports said.

ISLAMABAD: At least 100 Pakistan soldiers were buried under snow after an avalanche hit at an army camp in the Siachen sector on Saturday, officials said.

The avalanche hit a battalion headquarters at Gyari in Siachen sector at around 6 am, TV news channels reported. Chief military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said a rescue operation was underway.

Helicopters, sniffer dogs and additional troops had been sent to the area to help with the rescue in the desolate region, a military statement said.

The incident occurred at a spot near Skardu in the eastern Karakoram mountain range.

Some reports suggested that 135 soldiers, including a Colonel, had been hit by the avalanche.

There were reports of casualties but these could not be independently confirmed.

Gyari is home to an important battalion headquarters and at one time, up to 3,000 soldiers were based in the area.

Following the ceasefire along the frontiers in Jammu and Kashmir, both India and Pakistan reduced troop levels.

The Siachen glacier is known as the world’s highest and coldest battlefield. More Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been killed by adverse weather than combat in the sector. — PTI

NEW DELHI: Army Chief Gen. V. K. Singh has dismissed reports of "unusual" movement of two elite units of Army towards the Capital in mid-January calling it "routine" for which there was no need to "notify" the government.

"Notify for what? What was happening? We keep doing this so many times," he told 'The Hindu' when asked if the Army had notified the government on the movement of the two units. An Indian Express report on Wednesday on the troop movement on the night of January 16-17, the day the Army Chief had approached the Supreme Court on the age issue, had created a furore that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister A. K. Antony had rubbished it as "alarmist" and "baseless".

To a question whether the government had sought a clarification on the January 16 movement of troops, Gen Singh said, "It was not like that. No clarification was asked for. These were routine issues. I don't think one or two units ever bother anyone. It was not not as if the whole of the armoured division was marching towards Delhi. This is just a figment of imagination."

He also rejected any link between the timing of the troop exercises and his moving the Supreme Court and suggestions that the movement was meant to scare the government or exert pressure. "How is there any connection. You have gone to the Supreme Court. What is there to scare the government for? These are fables of a sick mind," the Army Chief said.— PTI

Lahore: Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has called for a jihad against the United States to save Pakistan and Islam.

“Come to us. We will teach you the meaning of jihad… The time to fight has come,” The Express Tribune quoted Saeed, as saying at a sermon.

“They (US) are even scared of my name. This is the same jihad which caused the USSR to break and now America is failing because of it. Analysts and journalists don’t realise why America is failing, the only reason is jihad. There are many parties in Pakistan, but America has only sent a message to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, because we do jihad,” he added.

His statement came after the US put a 10-million-dollar bounty on his head.