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India's terms for attending SAARC meet

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI OCT. 23. India has made attendance in the scheduled SAARC summit in Islamabad next year conditional on solid progress being made on economic cooperation agreements within the regional grouping. "There has to be something concrete to show as far as progress on SAPTA and SAFTA are concerned," the sources said, adding that crucial meetings at the official level are to take place next week in Kathmandu.

The Commerce Secretary, Dipak Chatterjee, would travel to Nepal for a meeting of the SAARC Committee on Economic Cooperation, sources said. Other interactions are also scheduled. For some time now, India has pointed to other SAARC members that Pakistan was holding up progress on greater economic cooperation. They acknowledged that a formal letter was received last month from Pakistan through the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu proposing January 11-13 as dates for the summit meeting. After India makes an assessment of the progress at the Kathmandu meetings, a decision would be taken whether or not the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, will travel to Islamabad for the SAARC summit.

The sources maintained that India was likely to decide next month whether or not the dates were suitable for the Prime Minister to visit Pakistan. They made it plain that India was concerned about the possibility of high-intensity "terrorist strikes" in the run-up to the SAARC summit or even during the course of the meeting. Such a concern, clearly, is a real one given the fact that Pakistan-based terrorist groups have been targeting innocent civilians both within and outside Jammu and Kashmir.

Asked whether some countries had sent in their consent to the dates proposed by Pakistan, the sources replied in the affirmative. They also pointed out to the fact that no government had taken shape in Pakistan as yet and New Delhi was still watching the situation. There is little doubt that given the "high-voltage" media coverage being given to Pakistan, India and the SAARC summit, "this controversy will not die down till New Delhi decides one way or the other."

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