Islamabad, Sept 08: Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri will visit six South Asian nations including India to personally hand out invitations to the SAARC summit in January, a spokesman said today. Kasuri will visit Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka this week, and India, the Maldives and Bhutan on a second trip at a later date, Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told. He did not specify dates for the second round of visits including India.
Pakistan is hosting the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit from January 4-6 in its capital Islamabad.
Kasuri will head to Dhaka tomorrow then on to Kathmandu and Colombo "to deliver invitations for the SAARC summit," Khan said.
"The Minister will deliver the invitations to the leaders of the three countries on behalf of Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali," he said.
Kasuri will arrive in Nepal on September 12 where he will hand over the invitation to Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa.
From September 13-15 he will visit Sri Lanka to formally invite President Chandrika Kumaratunga, Khan said.
The 12th summit of SAARC, which was formed in 1985, should have been held in January this year, but it was held up by tensions between Pakistan and India.
Bureau Report