Pakistan Ready To Meet India During SAARC Summit

“The ball is in India’s court," Kasuri told reporters after attending a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, which with Pakistan make up the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“It takes two to tango. You require a peace partner. We can’t do it by ourselves."

The 12th SAARC summit opening this Sunday presents the first chance for Indian and Pakistani leaders to come face to face since nearly going to war in 2002 after a deadly attack on India’s parliament. New Delhi blamed the December 2001 attack on what it calls ‘Pakistan-backed militants’.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is due to land in the capital Islamabad Saturday for his first visit to Pakistan since his famous bus journey across the border in 1999.

He will have a chance to meet Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf Sunday night when Musharraf hosts a banquet for all visiting SAARC heads of state.

So far Vajpayee has not formally sought a separate meeting with Musharraf, as the five other visiting heads of state have done in accordance with SAARC summit traditions.

If the two do meet, formal discussions are not expected.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shashank, who uses only one name, repeated Friday that "no meetings have been fixed."

Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said in the lead-up to the summit that food and weather may be the most they will discuss.

“They will meet, they will sit together, they will talk… maybe talk about the weather or maybe about food… but a summit on India-Pakistan relations, our policy is that we want to start the talks from below, not from the top," Sinha said last month.

FMs Meeting

Meanwhile, SAARC Foreign Ministers met in Islamabad Friday to fine-tune draft pacts on free trade, terrorism and poverty alleviation to be signed at a landmark regional summit starting this weekend.

Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers Sinha and Kasuri embraced each other at the start of the Council of Ministers meeting, raising hopes for cordiality between the rival states’ leaders at their first encounter since near-war in 2002.

Kasuri was buoyant on prospects for the signing of a regional free trade pact, which is hoped will transform the home of half the world’s poor into an powerful trade bloc.

"I have just come back from the meeting where there was a great degree of warmth and candor and friendship," Kasuri said of the SAARC Ministers meeting.

"If we proceed in the same manner in the second session (Saturday) maybe our heads will be, or the summit will be, ready to sign the SAFTA agreement. Of course it is for them."

The Council of Ministers of SAARC will conclude their deliberations Saturday.

The South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) topped the agenda with a regional terror pact and an agreement on fighting poverty.

"The two-day conference is expected to iron out lingering differences over plans to create a free trade area in South Asia, as less developed members still have concerns," a foreign ministry official told AFP.

The Foreign Ministers also discussed adding a clause on ‘choking terrorist financing’ to an existing joint statement on terrorism.

The SAARC standing committee of top Foreign Ministry officials of the seven states approved a draft of the new text at preparatory meetings earlier this week.

A Pakistani official involved in the negotiations said it was directed at fighting international terrorism and did not relate to the insurgency in disputed Kashmir, which Pakistan considers a struggle for self-determination and India considers terrorism.

"The drafting and approval of the anti-terrorism protocol at the delegate levels marks a step towards developing a coherent regional response for dealing with the threat of transnational terrorism," the official said.

A draft SAARC declaration will also be discussed by the Foreign Ministers ahead of the three-day summit starting Sunday.

SAARC heads of government will open the three-day summit, the forum’s first in two years, Sunday.

India’s refusal to attend the summit in Islamabad last year, at the height of near-war tensions with Pakistan, triggered its cancellation.

Observers are hoping the nuclear neighbors’ leaders will meet for the first time since the tensions on the summit’s sidelines.