www.punjabics.com

Home

Zardari avoids Sharm El Sheikh meeting with Singh

By Baqir Sajjad Syed 
Friday, 19 Jun, 2009 | 03:03 AM PST |
 

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh proceed to line up for a family photo at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Yekaterinburg.—Reuters

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari has dropped his plan to attend the 15th Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh where, according to an announcement, he was to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The Pakistan delegation to the summit will now be led by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani. ‘Our prime minister will be attending the NAM summit,’ Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said.
The plan was changed after the Yekaterinburg meeting between President Zardari and Prime Minister Singh on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit which, according to diplomatic sources, became ‘unpleasant’ at the outset because of Mr Singh’s ‘rude’ remarks. 
Before the start of the ice-breaking meeting, the Indian premier bluntly told President Zardari in presence of reporters that his mandate was limited to telling Pakistan that it should not allow its soil to be used for terrorism against India. 
The remark irked President Zardari who immediately asked the media to be escorted out of the conference room. In a press statement issued after the meeting, President Zardari’s office had announced that the two leaders would get together again in Sharm El Sheikh.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had also confirmed the Sharm El Sheikh meeting between the two leaders. Sources here claimed that the president had decided to skip the Sharm El Sheikh trip to avoid another encounter with Mr Singh.
 
The FO spokesman played down Mr Zardari’s decision not to attend the summit and said: ‘It was agreed that there will be another meeting of the political leadership of the two countries during NAM summit.’
The FO spokesman said Pakistan was satisfied with the outcome of the Yekaterinburg meeting between President Zardari and Prime Minister Singh and it had never expected the interaction to lead to immediate resumption of composite dialogue between the two countries.
‘From our perspective, the SCO summit in Russia provided a good opportunity for Pakistan and India to break the ice,’ he said at his briefing on Thursday, adding that Pakistan had gone to the meeting with all sincerity and seriousness.
Pakistan now appears to be pinning hopes on the secretaries’ level talks and wants them to be ‘result oriented’. ‘We are looking forward to a productive meeting between the foreign secretaries. Normal relations between our two countries, free of disputes and conflict and embedded in the principles of non-interference, equality and mutual respect, are indispensable for peace, security and prosperity in our region,’ said Mr Basit.
APP adds: The spokesman said Pakistan had suffered the most because of extremism and terrorism, adding that there had been 22 terrorist attacks in various parts of the country over the past one year, claiming 300 lives.
Answering a question about shifting of troops, the spokesman said: ‘It is incorrect that troops have been withdrawing from the eastern border for deployment on the western border.’