Six months after their Summit in Agra, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf will be in Kathmandu at the same time for the SAARC Summit from January four to six but there is no official word about a meeting between the two leaders.
The Summit would be preceded by a meeting of the Council of SAARC Foreign Minister on January two and three, an External Affairs Ministry spokesperson told reporters on Friday.
Foreign Secretaries of the member States will meet for three days from December 30 to prepare the ground for the ministerial and Summit meetings Foreign Ministers of the SAARC countries had met over an informal lunch on November 13 in New York on the sidelines of U N General Assembly session to finalise dates for the summit. To a question, the spokesperson said bilateral meetings have taken place in the past on the margins of SAARC Summit. Officials said informal contacts between leaders do take place at such summits but ruled out a structured meeting between Vajpayee and Musharraf. After the Agra experience, New Delhi is wary of Musharraf using the occasion for repeating stated positions, India-bashing on Kashmir and marshalling good publicity.
The last SAARC Summit was held in Colombo in July 1998. The next Summit slated to be held in Kathmandu in November, 1999 was deferred after India objected to the participation of Musharraf who had in October that year ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup after being sacked as Army Chief. Bureau Report